Stop Living in Your Inbox
Spending too much of your day on emails? Is it starting to become overwhelming? Are you checking your email, when you should be doing something else?
So are we…
For many of us, email has become one of our standard modes of working. We live in our email inbox, doing everything from personal communication with family and friends to carrying out complete projects through email.
Here are a few steps to limit your time in your inbox and
get things done.
- Check your email at predetermined times, and leave it alone for the rest of the day — that will allow you to work on more important stuff. An example is to only check your email every hour or at 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m.
- Set up a message rule in your email account and have newsletters, regular announcements and personal emails go into specific folders to view at a more convenient time.
- Before you check your emails in the morning, make a list of your most important tasks that need to get done that day. This way, the emails that you receive that day will not dictate or take away from the things that you must get done.
- Turn off email notifications. It interrupts whatever you’re working on, and draws you back to your email, and takes away from whatever project your currently working on.
- Be liberal with the delete key. Too often we feel like we need to reply to every email. You can’t reply to everything. Just choose the most important ones, and reply to them.
