Declutter your email

Filed in archive Computers on September 4, 2008

You have organized your home, your office, your store and everything else you can think of but have you organized your email yet?

The Organising Queen has some suggestions on organizing your email system to make your life a little bit easier.

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Image# 6637754

I don't know about you but I receive anywhere from 200 to 300 emails per day and they can overwhelm me especially when I am traveling and can only access my email sporadically.

The first suggestion is to get off of any email list that you are not actively participating in. I belong to several groups but I often will only skim the message and not really look at it. Finally I had to decide whether the emails from that group were really that important if I was not even bothering to read the messages. By eliminating some of the groups I belong to I was able to get rid of 25% of the messages that were coming into my email box.

Next suggestion is to go through your email folders on a daily basis and try to eliminate any emails you no longer need. I am very guilty of putting emails into folder then letting them sit there for months at a time. Go through your folders and get rid of any of those emails that you no longer need.

The third suggestion is to not cut down on the number of folders you have. Once again I am a guilty party on this one. I have way too many folders, starting them thinking that this will help me organize things better but in the long run they do nothing but take up valuable space. Take a look at the number of folders you have in your email system and see if you can eliminate a portion of them.

Finally, set up a time during the day to answer emails that will take some time to respond to so that you can ensure that all your important emails get answered in a timely manner.