Tricks for managing your email inbox
Email is both an incredible convenience and a huge stressor for many of us. Our inboxes overwhelm us with messages, yet most of them are vital. Fortunately, there are many techniques out there that can help make your inbox easier to handle. Here are a few of them:
- Set up folders
Setting up folders or labels in your email client is an easy way to organize your inbox. Often, you can set filters to sort out your emails automatically so that emails from certain addresses will go into a separate folder.
With this feature, trivial emails are filtered out and don’t take up essential space in your inbox. It’s pretty easy to set this up and since this feature is available in most email clients and services, it is probably available to you.
- Enable conversation view
Enabling conversation (or “threaded”) view in your email client minimizes the number of visible emails in your inbox. Emails that are related to one conversation will all be found under one “email” instead of taking up several spots in your inbox.
Also, when you utilize this feature, you will address all emails in a conversation when you address one. There is no longer a need to go through and archive each individual email – delete one, and you’re done.
- If it will take less than 5 minutes to address, deal with it right away
Any time an email will take five minutes or less to address, it’s counterproductive to put it off. If it must be done, it will have to either be done now or later, so why not do it now? As you continue this habit, these simple emails will start taking even less time and it will become like second nature to address emails as they arrive.
These tips are only three of many that can help streamline your email inbox. They’re easy ways to manage your email and help make it less stressful, so why not try them out?
For additional tips on email management check out this article from Business Insider.
