Okay, I admit it, I have an e-mail problem. I have 1,203 items in my Outlook inbox, 781 in my Yahoo mailbox, and a few starting to stack up in gmail. Oh, not to mention, I have an e-mail address with one of my clients that I am afraid to check.
I don’t know about you, but as a communication professional, and a contractor, I save e-mails obsessively, and rarely go back to weed them out.
The DownloadSquad blog offers the following five tips to declutter your e-mail box:
- If you don't need to read it now, it shouldn't be in your inbox.
- If you've already responded to it, it shouldn't be in your inbox.
- If it comes from a known source (some person, retailer or mailing list that sends you mail more often than once every few months) it should be labeled automatically.
- No one needs to look at their own inbox more than once an hour (and for many, once every 2-3 hours).
- To borrow from the cult of GTD, re-factor constantly and mercilessly.
They expand on these five tips in their post.
I might add one more tip. Make subject folders and move anything related to that subject into that folder. Also, keep deleted and sent messages for two months, so you can go back and get that e-mail again if you need it – leaving you free to mercilessly delete stuff.
I think where I fall down on the job is in setting up filters. Note to self: Add some new filters.
Do you have any tips to declutter e-mail?
