This is the year you take control of your inbox. Conquer it in just 5 easy steps.
Almost everyone is bad at email.
It shows up in a number of ways: The number of unread emails in your inbox. The amount of time you're wasting on email. Or just the total frustration that email causes you.
But here's the good news: You can get better at email. It's really easy — and it starts with these five simple steps:
Your goal should be simple: When you open your inbox, all you should see are emails from family, friends, and important co-workers. Everything else should be filtered into an another folder or category.
If you've got Gmail, then using the Priority Inbox can help keep all your emails in the right place. There's simply no reason for Facebook notifications or LinkedIn updates to clog your main inbox.
(But the bad news: The Priority Inbox isn't available for most mobile devices.)
Other popular clients, like Yahoo or Outlook, also make it easy for you to filter emails into specific folders, which will keep your inbox uncluttered. (Here's how to filter on Yahoo, and here's how to do it in Outlook.)
Most people spend too long composing emails, and that just leads to a backlog of emails to deal with.
So respond faster. Some emails only require a few words. (Amazon's Jeff Bezos is famous for responding to emails with as little a question mark.) It's rare that an email really needs to go longer than 5-7 sentences.
The shorter the response, the less time you'll spend dealing with your inbox.
There are also tools to help you process email faster. One of the best is Boomerang, which lets you schedule emails for later and hide emails from your inbox for as long as you want.
via IFTTT
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