When it comes to organizing and simplifying my life, it seems as if my email is always at the bottom of the list. If you’re anything like me, your inbox looks something like a never-ending black hole. Before I established a few ground rules for my inbox, it would stress me out just thinking about how many emails I need to wade through. And it doesn’t matter how many times I go through and unsubscribe from mailing lists, every once in a while I have to go back through and re-establish these quick habits.

Simple tips to increase email productivity and reduce inbox stress:

• Unsubscribe from the newsletters that no long align with your overall goals. This is by far the most effective way to downsize your inbox and if you’re anything like me, you’re probably just deleting most of these emails every day, anyways, right? So while you’re deleting why not go ahead and just unsubscribe!

• Sift through your spam/junk file. I like to do this on a regular basis because every once in a while an important email will accidentally get flagged as “spam”. After sifting through empty the the folder.

• Set up filters or priority inboxes to auto sort messages that need your attention at a later time. For instance, I have all emails from Amazon automatically sent to an “Amazon” inbox. This way I can go back and easily look through all of the order confirmations / shipping notifications in one folder and it’s not clogging up my normal inbox thread.

• Use a calendar/planner to remind you to do something instead of leaving emails in your inbox to remind you. Whether it's to make a call, follow-up with someone or start a project. Instead of taking up valuable real estate in your inbox with emails you have already read, schedule these to-dos and action items in your calendar or on your daily agenda.

• Archive emails you’re not quite ready to delete yet. A lot of the time our inboxes are filled with emails we’re not sure we’ll need in the future. So simply archive if you’re not sure you’ll need it later that way it’s out of your main inbox but not completely deleted.

• Utilize Boomerang to schedule emails or bring them back into your inbox at a later date. Boomerang is a plug-in that allows you to schedule an email to send in the future or bring an email back to your inbox at a certain time. For instance, schedule your flight itinerary to pop back up in your inbox the day before your flight.

How do you minimize inbox overwhelm?

xx, Merrissa

pin for later