Email is a great tool but its all to easy to let it dominate your working day or personal time. With so many emails arriving in you ‘inbox’, sooner than later you could become overwhelmed by the volume of messages received every day.

Here’s 10 few tips we practice which you may wish to consider implementing.

1.  Avoid Email Interruptions

  • If you find yourself reading emails every time your email program goes “ping” , stop what you are doing right now and turn off the new mail announcement, so that you can get some real work done!
  • If your email program is set to check for email every 5 minutes, change this to 20 minutes or, even better, turn auto-checking off entirely.

2. Handle once only!

For  maximum efficiency and productivity try to finish handling with every new message after you first read it. Do not read an email and then just leave it in your email ‘inbox’ without carrying out one of the following four actions;

  • Reply to it (see number 3 below)
  • Forward it
  • File it (see number 4 below)
  • Delete it

If you read a message but don’t carry out one of the four steps above, you will only have to read it again later when you will have to deal with it! Don’t let emails rot in your inbox!

3. Quick replies

Don’t file any email which you can respond to inside one minute. Reply straightaway and move on. You’ll not only have one less thing to file but your recipient won’t have to wait unduly for a short response.

4. Create Email folders

As mentioned above, you should never read an message in your inbox and then leave it there. Some people suggest leaving important emails in your email inbox as your “to do” list but we would not recommend this, as it can get  far too overwhelming. Simply create folders into which you can move your emails, depending on what your plans are for them.

For example, for emails which require to be acted upon, create a folder called @Action, and into this folder, you can place emails which, obviously, need Action! By placing a ‘@’ at the start of the folder name, that will mean that it will sit neatly above all your other folders and always in view.

Perhaps you may also wish to create the following folders, listed below, for appropriate action as defined below:

@Review – for non-urgent emails for you to read when you have the time
@Awaiting – for emails where you’re awaiting a response

A logical folder structure keeps your inbox manageable, and puts vital information at your fingertips.

Follow this practice and it will not only clear out your inbox, but it will give you a great sense of organisation and available time each time you check your inbox folder and see it empty or few emails residing there!

5.  Use Flags

Most email programs enable you to ‘flag’ emails which have arrived. After you’ve moved an email from your inbox and it needs further action, decide on a priority (for example, try the traffic lights idea with ‘red’ for urgent, “orange’ for ‘normal’ and ‘green’ for non-urgent) and then you can sort emails in your @ folders and see at a glance what the most urgent emails are.

 6. Keep Your Emails Short

Your email won’t be entered for the Nobel Prize for Literature – use proper grammar and punctuation but keep it short and to the point. Don’t avoid saying something that needs to be said but stay focused, say what you need to say, send it and move on.

7. Avoid email ping-pong

Sometimes an issue can be resolved quicker by a quick chat on the phone or by dropping into a colleague’s office, as opposed to a series of emails exchanged between two people over a period of time. Email is a very quick way to communicate but if one person is out of the office or at a meeting, then you could be waiting for a response for ages … and when they email you, you could be unavailable too!

8.  Set-up a Email Signature

Many people are aware of how to use an email signature but most people don’t. Instead of typing your name and contact information at the end of every email, set up a signature file with the relevant information, and let your email program automatically add your “sig file” to the end of every email.

9. Create Email Filters

More experienced email users may wish to consider creating rules and filters to handle incoming emails. These powerful tools can be used to act upon inbound emails to highlight, move, file, delete etc. emails depending on the rules you have pre-set. You can even set a rule to notify you with a sound when an email arrives from any pre-defined email address – one way to keep the boss happy without having to drag yourself away from your normal work to deal with new emails!

10.  Cancel your subscriptions

Once upon a time you signed up to obtain a newsletter about trade information / holiday offers / cheap flights / daily jokes etc. but you’re are no longer interested. Perhaps you bought an item once and have been opted-in to receive latest shop news. Simply unsubscribe following the instructions the newsletter should provide …… and don’t tick any more boxes requesting your permission to send you more (or untick the ones that are automatically ticked) unless its really important that you receive it!

Summary

Carry out all (or some) of these tips and we guarantee that you will spend less time managing emails and it will be much more effective.