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You've Got Mail ... Email

5 Tips for Managing Your Email Inbox

A year or so ago, I wrote a post about organizing and managing your piles of paperwork and junk mail. These days, I get more, actually much more email than snail mail. Email is a wonderful tool for business as well as for personal use. It is great to have (nearly) instant responses.

Technology has advanced very quickly in the last couple of decades. We now live in a 24/7 world, where practically everything is available at a moment’s notice. Gone are the days of typing a letter, mailing it, and then waiting a week or more for a response. Nowadays, people get impatient if they don’t get an instant response to an email they sent.

As a result, nearly everyone has at least one, if not more, email addresses. I have both personal and business email addresses … all told, I have 6 email addresses. Do you have more than one?
Email inboxes fill up fast. Some people get hundreds every day. It can become overwhelming very quickly.

Here are some tips I try to follow monthly:
• Create sub folders to file emails you will need to refer back to at a future date.
• After reading an email, delete it or file it away in the appropriate folder
• Try to respond right away … saving it for later keeps the inbox cluttered.
• If you get too many emails sales ads from stores, you can request to receive fewer by changing your preferences or unsubscribing completely.
• You can delete multiple emails at one time by using the search bar to find all the emails from a specific sender, then click on check all, then click delete all.

Once you get your inbox emptied out, try to stay on top of it by setting aside some time every month to keep it manageable. It will take less and less time each month.

I hope these tips prove “helpful” for you 🙂

Getting Organized - Email

Getting Organized ~ Email

I’m old enough to remember the days before email was even a word. In the mid 90’s I set up my first email account through AOL … like as in “You’ve Got Mail” (love that movie, btw). Remember the weird ringing tone as the dial up connection to the internet was made. It was fun sharing jokes and stories with family and friends. However, important things were still mailed through the Post Office … affectionately known as “snail mail”.

In today’s world, email has made snail mail practically obsolete … practically, but not totally. We all receive plenty of “junk mail” to attest to that. You can read about my tips about organizing paper clutter here.

These days, our electronic inboxes are overflowing with emails … some are from family & friends, some are business/school related, some are household related, but many, a great many, are advertisements.

I try to “organize” my email accounts monthly. I have a couple … personal and business.
Today, I’ll concentrate on my personal/household account. I’ve had the same email address for many years. That being said, I’m on many mailing lists that are no longer important to me. Here’s an example, as many of you know, I homeschooled my kids. My youngest graduated in 2011 … and I still receive emails from homeschool textbook companies 🙁 Instead of just deleting them, I unsubscribed so I won’t receive future emails from them. I also made adjustments to the frequency that I receive emails from companies that are still relevant to me but I don’t necessarily want to hear from on a daily basis. I also usually just delete all those forwarded jokes (sorry) … I just don’t have time to read them all, especially since I’ve probably seen many of them floating around on Facebook or Twitter.

I created separate folders and “filed” important emails that I may need to refer back to in the future. I have also created a new email address that I use strictly for signing up for free giveaways and following blogs, etc. I don’t have to check this daily, only when I have a little time for some leisurely reading. It is there when I need it and then my other email inbox doesn’t get clogged up so quickly 🙂

After my initial inbox clean up (which I admit, took awhile), I now delete and file stuff from my smartphone whenever I have a few minutes of downtime between clients and appointments.

Hopefully, I’ve inspired you to take a look at your inbox & get it more organized 🙂

Photo credit to SeanMacEntee