How to quickly make a dent in your email inbox

My inbox is not looking its best.

I have 36 in my personal/ business box and before I put these tips I’m about to share with you into practice last week, I had 57 (I’m now down to about 12 – 15) in my work box.

They’re all read – I marvel at the restraint some people show in not reading emails immediately. Or maybe I’m just insanely curious.

 

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So this is not a post about how to empty out your inbox and keep it that way. That’s what Conquer your email is for.

It’s just that I seem to have a lot in my boxes (relative to my normal 10 – 15 comfort level), some colleagues were also discussing this with me last week (the one person was saying he could seriously just process email the entire day and never get any “real work” done… and STILL not get through it all) and one of my clients also has some email goals.

Here’s the quick-fix emergency inbox fix… just so you can breathe again:

1. Disable all the social media notifications

If you haven’t already turned off all the notifications, take a minute or two to go into each of your social media accounts – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. – and turn off the email notifications.

Most things aren’t urgent and you’ll be on the respective site later today or in a few days’ time anyway.

2. Check on conversations

Click the Subject/ Conversation tab on the email menu bar. Your inbox is now filtered by conversation.

If you’ve been talking to the same person and the conversation’s gone back and forth, there may be some older emails you can quickly delete. Oftentimes when I do this step (it’s not my preferred default way of organising my inbox), I can delete about 4 – 6 emails very quickly. Everybit helps.

3. Do you really need to answer the email?

Click the date tab on the email menu bar once or twice so that the oldest emails appear on the top.

Look through the oldest messages. Do you really need to answer them?

If you can see that those people aren’t waiting for a reply, just delete.  If this feels too drastic for you, set your timer for 10 minutes and write SHORT replies to as many people as possible.

4. Copy down information quickly

I’m very guilty of this myself. I sometimes keep emails because I need to store the information somewhere else. E.g write a friend’s new address on an envelope to send off something.

If you need to save addresses, websites, telephone numbers, recipes (another of my guilty email mistakes!), copy them to your contacts/ addresses or with my recipes, copy and paste into a Word document and delete the email.

5. Add items to your master to-do list

Some of us see our email inbox as our master lists. Rather drag to a task, or if you’re old school like me, write it onto your proper master to-do list. E.g. I need to go into my kids’ blog and change the footer. It will take more than 2 minutes so I should add it to my list and get to it. Instead it’s in my inbox.

Hope this helps!

What are your favourite tips to empty out your email?

ps, here’s the link to buy Conquer your email for those of you who have a chronic problem with your email 🙂

It’s office organising month and today we’re talking about email

I received this question from a reader and I’ve been waiting for March to answer it. I just randomly decided that March will be office organising month on the blog because I have a few things in mind I want to share about offices.

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I have trouble deciding if an email needs to be stored (will I need it in the future?). If yes, where and once I have filed it, I don’t have any system to go through them again so outlook becomes problematic.

If you have written any posts that would help could you guide me to them?

For example how long would you keep email receipts from online purchases? I also tend to store useful newsletters but then never get around to reading them again.

Emails are the main area I struggle with.

Thanks,

Joanne

 

I’m super passionate about emails so I loved that Joanne wrote to me.

My personal email policy is the same as my paper policy – keep very little because otherwise you have to store them.

Storing emails

The only emails I specifically store are my template emails and ones delegating work to my virtual assistant, Trisha. And that’s not so much to check up on her but to remind myself if I have asked her to do something or not.

I do keep a couple of others for short-term reference purposes like coaching action plans I send to my clients, emails from my kids’ school, etc. I keep the old one til I get the new one…

I do ask myself why I need to keep them and usually my rule of thumb is, if that information is nowhere else, then I’ll keep it for a while. E.g. if I send out a form to a client, I don’t keep those emails because I have those forms elsewhere.

The best question to ask – why do I want to keep these? Because I always have is not a good answer. Really question your habits.

How long to keep email purchase receipts?

I have a folder called temporary/ etsy purchases (which, right there, shows you where I spend a lot of money :)) I drag all my receipts in there until the item arrives. So with my Amazon Kindle purchases, I never keep those receipts since the book is transferred to my Kindle immediately. I print the groupon-type emails if I need to physically visit a vendor (hair, massage, etc.) as you need to present the voucher anyway.

Storing newsletters

I never keep these. In my mind, newsletters are current, hence the word “new” 🙂 If I get behind, I just delete them unless I see a subject I’m really interested in reading about. I actually have two from one person in my inbox at the moment because I need to download audios from the specific site.

And, if I download audios, I listen within the week otherwise it’ll never happen (I’ve never thought, “oh I’m so bored, let me scroll through my hard drive and look for things to do. You?) and then I delete the audio from my computer unless I paid for it and will want to listen again.

Radical? Maybe but those things take up space and every coach/ consultant/ online marketer puts out tons of these things. I’ve accepted I will never be able to stay current so I go with what I fancy.

If I find I’ve not wanted to open a newsletter for about 3 – 4 weeks, I spend an extra 30 seconds asking myself why I’m on the list and 90% of the time, I’ll unsubscribe. If my newsletter is a burden to you, please feel free to unsubscribe – I want you to want to read it 🙂

It would be remiss of me not to mention my Office Organising Product Bundle for further email resources. There is a fantastic product in there called Conquer your email, one section of the Virtual Organising Seminar deals with email and one of the sections in the 7 easy steps to organise your office also deals with email. You get audio downloads, stuff to read and you get email support so all the learning styles are well accommodated.

It really is great value for money and if you just put into practice one or two email steps, you’ll save yourself hours over the course of the month. Which will pay for the bundle many times over.

End of sales schpiel 🙂

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What are your best email tips?

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