Email can be a monster! Here are a few tips to managing your inbox for balance.
- If you want to receive less emails, send less emails.
- Batch your emails. Try to spend time in your inbox no more than 1-3 times per day. Ideally, you should check your inbox first thing in the morning, quick scan around lunch, and again at the end of the work day.
- Unsubscribe to emails that are not vital to your success and happiness, especially those who add you to their list without your permission.
- Try to ‘touch’ each email only one time.
- Once you open an email do one of the following: reply, delete, or file.
- For those emails which cannot be immediately resolved with one of the above actions, you can mark them as unread – this should be done sparingly.
- After the initial email scan your inbox should be pared down to items that still need action. Those items can be resolved during that email block if you have the time remaining so schedule when you will complete those on your weekly planning sheet.
- When you are not in an email session, close your email or un-sync your inbox.
- Consider using automatic replies when you are working outside of your email or during the transition from constant email to batched email. We teach people what to expect from us, so you may have to adjust existing expectations around your email availability.
- Feel free to use schedule send for emails that need to arrive on a certain day or are being sent outside of normal business hours.
Get started on those and contact us if you need more help!
