Whether you like it or not, the chances are that email is an inseparable part of your daily routine. Not that things were radically different ten years ago, but now we’re also bombarded with social media messages, app notifications, and many other sources of distraction. As such, the importance of effective email management has never been more obvious.
Check Your Email Regularly
Are you one of those people who shiver in disgust at the sight of an email notification? We recommend you check your emails at least twice a day: once early in the morning and at the end of the day. It’s also a good idea to use your smartphone to reply to new emails throughout the day whenever you have a few minutes of free time.
Organize Your Emails with Labels and Folders
Modern email clients and services provide you with a whole arsenal of handy email management software tools, and you should take as much advantage of them as possible. Create folders for each category of emails you receive and use smart filters to move new emails to appropriate folders for you. Prioritize the folders and always check the most important ones before you move on to those you deem to be less important.
Minimize the Number of Emails You Send
There’s one easy trick how to receive fewer emails: minimize the number of emails you send. As you might expect, the fewer emails you send to other people, the fewer replies you will likely get. Once you start thinking about it, you might be surprised by just how many emails you send are unnecessary. Some things don’t need to be said at all, while others are better handled in person as it would take dozens and dozens of replies to say what can be said during a minute-long discussion.
Set Up Multiple Mailboxes
There’s a number of reputable email providers offering their services for free. Some focus on features and convenience, others try to entice users with unlimited storage space, and some are privacy-oriented, featuring strong end-to-end encryption and robust 2-factor authentication. As such, there’s really no reason to have just one mailbox for everything. Managing email becomes much easier when you can use one mailbox for work, another one for personal matters, and yet another one for shopping and online services, for example.
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