Too Much Email?

If you're like most people, you have an email address but you probably have hundreds or thousands of emails just sitting in your inbox either waiting for some kind of response or never have been read. You can tame your inbox but you have to do some hard work upfront and follow some new rules regarding email from now on.

I once read about a person who worked somewhere like Microsoft but had like thirty thousand messages in his inbox. This person tried separating his emails by a complicated color-coding system but in the end it still wasn't enough and so he had to take a email holiday and just delete everything in his inbox and start over. He noted this wasn't the first time he had done this either.

I don't think an email holiday is the answer but if you feel you have no other option you should at least warn your friends and family that you are starting over. If possible you may even want to change your email address at this point.

If you have decided not to have an email holiday than you just need to take the time and go through your email. You should go through and delete any Spam or special offers or anything that isn't from a legitimate contact. Even if you have email from a company that you are generally interested in, you're still better off to hit delete because you'll never get to it. For the things you insist on keeping, create different folders and move those emails to appropriately labeled folders. Every year thou it's probably best to go and delete or archive anything older than a year old.

Now that you have only personal email left from wither friends or coworkers you have to start making some harder decisions. As for work, save anything that you have not completed in your inbox, but if it's just information and doesn't need a reply, save it in a work references subfolder. Do the same thing for friends, if you have information from friends that's just for you to read but doesn't require a response, either delete it or save it somewhere else. Anything you have left you just need to sit down and respond too. But when you respond you may want to note at the bottom very nicely, "no response necessary" if no response is required. This will cut out the never-ending supply of useless email. It's ok to be friendly over email, but you don't need to say hi back and forth twenty times in a row.

No that your inbox is down to a manageable size you can do several things to keep it down. As mentioned above, feel fry to politely tell people if they do not need to reply back. Also when you respond to someone else's email be careful not to hit 'reply all' unless you really need to reply to everyone. This will cut out useless email to others and keep them from sending requests to you to stop including them on unnecessary emails.

If you really have a problem with Spam and your email reader or server doesn't have a good Spam filter, or if you just want less people contacting you, then sign up for a service that requires people to be authenticated before you receive their email. This may sound drastic but it will likely cut your incoming email way down.

Now, when you go through your email on a regular basis, follow the same pattern you did to get your email down to a manageable number in the first place. Delete offers and junk mail right away. Save important stuff to other folders if you don't need to reply but still need the info. And respond quickly to your other email.

If you still have an out of control inbox, than just setup an automated message that says you have removed yourself from email and please contact you in person. If it's really important, you'll hear from them.