Do you need to clear your Inbox?
Do you dread opening your email account because it is clogged up with hundreds of messages? Do you feel overwhelmed by an ever-growing list of incoming emails?
Not only is the beginning of the year a good time for setting goals, it is also the perfect time to clear out your email Inbox and take steps to make it more manageable.
Here are some tips for cleaning out your inbox, and then putting steps in place to make incoming messages more manageable.
1. Delete in Batches
To make it easier, and quicker, to delete messages that are no longer required, sort your Inbox by sender. You can then work through and delete the messages in batches. Eg newsletters, junk mail.
2. Create folders for archiving
For the remaining messages, create new folders and label them in an appropriate way for your messages such as one for each previous year, or months. Sort the inbox by date. Highlight the emails for a particular year or month and drag them across to the corresponding folder. You can then work through the more recent ones when you have the opportunity, or use them just as a reference if you have a query. If you have not used or looked at them in six months’ time – delete them.
3. Unsubscribe
To reduce the volume of incoming messages, unsubscribe to unnecessary newsletters and messages. Another option is to create another email account and only use that account for subscribing to newsletters.
4. Create new folders
To manage the incoming messages, create new folders for types of messages or specific senders.
5. Set up rules
To save time, create rules for incoming messages so that they divert straight in to your new folders. By monitoring when there are unread messages in those folders, you can read them by subject or priority.
Strawberry Office provides administrative support to small businesses, and lifestyle management to busy people.
If you would like help with reducing your inbox, and setting up new systems for managing your incoming messages, please contact me at anne@strawberryoffice.com to arrange a discovery call to discuss how I could help.
Thank you for reading.
Anne