How To Keep Up With Too Much Email

Keeping up with all of the email that is all over the place is ridiculous. At home, I think it’s a little bit easier because I don’t really get as much useful stuff. All the stuff is family, and you go through that as you can. The rest is spam, so it’s either read it or delete it. That’s easy.

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At work, it’s a little more difficult because at the end of the day, I really don’t like more than five emails in my inbox. I stick to the four-step plan to get down to those five emails, and that is to do it right away if it’s quick. Less than five minutes, just do it right away. It’ll fit in your schedule. There shouldn’t be too many of those, and eventually they’ll be all gone.

You can delegate it. That’s when you find out who really is best at it and who probably should be doing it instead of you, and shove it along that way. Not always possible, sometimes. Three, if it’s something that’s date activated, if it takes way too long or it’s something future looking, then you’re going to have to set a date to it and track it as it’s due item. Those are the legitimate ones that kind of suck a little bit because you’ve got to pay so much attention to them.

Or you just delete it. You’ll be surprised at how much stuff you can delete. Sometimes, I switch between deleting and filing away. You can file away quite a bit that really when your gut instinct tells you, “Ah, this is kind of already handled, and I don’t need to worry about it,” put it in the folder of to check up on later, and most of the time, it’ll never get bought up again.

I know that sounds bad, but really and truly, a lot of people send an email before they’ve even thought about it, and you really don’t need to spend too much time on it.

Anyway, that’s the major four-step approach to making sure your email inbox stays pretty doggone empty. I personally like the delete-it portion of it. That’s about all I have to say about that. Man, it feels so good to have that empty inbox. Thus, the tip for this one. Inbox away!