Confession time – both my email boxes (home and work) have been full to overflowing… for me (50-odd emails) … for the last month or so.
The reasons were valid at work – too many meetings and so on – but at home I realised that my email basics had slipped.
I took a couple of hours to put some things back into place and I’m breathing easy again.
1. Check Pinterest and Facebook notification settings
I unsubscribed from all the Pinterest and most of the Facebook notifications. I now only get messages, notes on my wall and photo tags from Facebook. I haven’t received Twitter notifications for years but I hardly use Twitter anyway. Maybe 3 times a year? And that’s really only to quickly “chat” to one or two people who are very active on there but not very email-responsive 😉
2. Evaluate Facebook groups
I’m being very conscious about joining groups. At the moment I’m only in the one active Facebook group, the Everything launch team for Mary de Muth’s new book.
Just this morning, I had to tell a friend (very nicely) that I can’t join her group because I don’t have the time to participate. Of course it wasn’t comfortable but it was honest and 100% in integrity.
3. Get off lists you don’t read
I realised that I skimmed over a lot of newsletter lists and hadn’t actually looked forward to or read them for months. Time to get off those lists.
I said a few months back to my newsletter subscribers that I take no offence if my newsletter is one of those they need to unsubscribe from.
After all, we all go through seasons in our life.
Don’t just delete the email; take a few seconds longer to click through and unsubscribe on the website in question.
4. Make decisions immediately
I noticed that I’d get pics or documents that I wanted to save but I’d hang onto the email instead.
Why?
Laziness, I suppose. Laziness to make appropriate decisions.
From now onwards, I will stop, pause for a few seconds to make a decision as to where I want to save it (if I do) and just do it there and then.
5. Focus
Quite honestly I could write a whole article on the power of focus.
But as it relates to email management, this is what typically happens. I start answering an email and another pops into my box. I see the little window at the corner of my screen so I click on it to open. My mind is now focussed on that email and I’ve forgotten about the first one.
I’m learning to ignore the bright, shiny emails and focus on what I’m doing until completion.
These 5 steps are really the back-to-basics of effective email management for me.
Do you need to take back control of your email box too? Start by putting into place these 5 steps and let me know if you need more help.
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PS I know that a lot of you have the luxury of a closet but in South Africa we don’t have them. Some people do have a dressing room with tons of space but again, rare.
It is liberating isn’t it? My home inbox recently reached over 800 and I took the slow approach so took 4 months to get it to 0, using many of the steps you mention. Unfortunately I’ve notied by inbox increasing again (currently at 42 so not too bad) and this is due to a lack of decision and old subscriptions starting to send our emails again. To tackle this build I have a task every 2 days to empty my list.
Of course, returning to work after a year maternity leave meant I had an inbox of 3600. My first action was to move them all to a backlog folder and start with an empty inbox.