Posted by Ray White on April 3, 2010 Comments (1)

One of the biggest time eaters in our hectic schedules is handling email. It seems the inbox never empties. How the heck does one get through all of it? There are lots of ebooks and blog posts about how to handle email. None of them agree with each other. You have to figure out what works best into your specific situation. These are my random thoughts on how to handle email. Use what you will. Laugh at the rest.

Pick ONE time of day to hit your inbox and handle everything at once.

I know, I know. Email never stops coming in. We deal with people in time zones across the globe. But seriously, how many email messages are so urgent that they can’t wait a few hours to be read? Your partners and special customers probably have other ways to contact you in case of emergency. If you do have reason to handle emergency situations by email, then install a support desk and hire someone to help you. That way, you can take turns sleeping. You can only do what is humanly possible. If you truly don’t want any email to wait 24 hours, then hit your email twice a day, three times at the most. Don’t leave your inbox open all day long. You have to limit your time spent on email or else you will be at it all day and nothing else will ever get done.

Mail Filters are your friends.

Or maybe your email client calls them mail or message rules. Gmail lets you put “labels” on certain email messages to help you sort them. Whatever it’s called, use it to organize your incoming mail. Separate all of your incoming mail into different folders or labels to help you classify how to deal with them. You can pick specific email addresses or subject lines (or both) to determine what goes where.

Suggestions for folders or labels:

• newsletters
• TE updates
• affiliate program updates
• Google alerts
• hosting/server alerts
• validation/welcome emails
• social media alerts
• payment notifications (the real ones, not the phish messages)

Don’t be afraid of the delete button.

Decide from the subject line whether it’s worth your time to read the message. If I see the same subject line twice, I’m not wasting my time on opening both messages. If the message is a follow up for something that I already took care of, then I don’t need to deal with it. And what is up with those “urgent” email messages? Have you ever opened an email message that the subject line said was “urgent” and it really was?

Unsubscribe from lists that no longer interest you.

Lessen the load by stopping the messages at the gate. If you already got all you can from that newsletter, then unsubscribe. It’s okay. Nobody’s feelings will get hurt. It just means that you are growing and ready to learn something new. Free up your inbox space for something that you will read and learn from.