The important part is to make sure you’re dealing with messages before you file them away. If it’s a task being added to your list, add it to a to-do list. If you can’t answer it, send a message to the sender with a referral to someone who can. Take Immediate Action Whenever PossibleĮvery single message should be dealt with as soon as it arrives. Get started with canned messages in whichever email program you prefer, set your common responses in stone, and save yourself hours every month, or even every week. Create Canned ResponsesĬanned responses get a bad rap, but when you find yourself typing out the same message a dozen times a week, you realize just how much time it can save. Figure out what labels work for you and put them to use. Some good, useful labels might include “to-do” or “respond-later” for specific kinds of messages, or labels for categories like customer service issues or messages you want to follow up on again later. Labels are another organizational structure you can apply, both with automatic filters and with self-applied labels when you receive and read a message. Setting up a good selection of folders will be a godsend, and it’s important enough it’s an entire other tip further down. Those weekly meeting minutes, those notices about the office party, that reminder to complete your training module – set up filters for the senders or the subject lines and file those messages away. Set Up Automatic FiltersĮverything you can’t unsubscribe to and can’t delete, can probably be filtered automatically. If you really find yourself missing a particular newsletter, you can always resubscribe. Who cares about that recommended product from Amazon, or that one guy’s weekly tips for app store marketing, or that pitch to help save some government program you cared about once two years ago? Unsubscribe and let your focus go where it needs to go. You might have to overcome your inherent Fear Of Missing Out, but it’s well worthwhile. It’s costing you cognitive focus and time every week to deal with it. If you find yourself archiving or ignoring a mailing list message more than twice in a row, unsubscribe. I don’t personally like this one much – it can get cluttered and you can lose your progress in each fairly easily – but it works for some people, and I’m all about providing varied solutions so there’s something for everyone. Some people, particularly those who only have 2-3 email accounts they want to monitor at once, can use multiple web browsers or apps to browse each one at the same time.Ī Firefox window for your Gmail, an Outlook window for Outlook, etc. I usually don’t recommend this unless all of the email accounts are for the same job, company, or subject matter, as being able to segment your different emails is very useful. The downside to this setup is that you have to pay careful attention to who and what you’re communicating with whom, so you don’t cross the streams, so to speak. Likewise, forwarding allows you to send responses from that master account that appear to come from the originating account. You can set up email forwarding to send every message from your individual accounts into one central account. Use a Master AccountĪn alternative technique is to use one master account. It helps dramatically with getting in the right fram e of mind to answer messages when you know what kind of messages you’ll be seeing in a given account. It sounds like a lot, but they can be unified and easily managed with other tips on this list, and they can be “turned off” when I need to focus on one type of task or another. For example, I have an email account strictly for personal and family emails, one for professional contacts and business deals, one for each business I run for their own operations, and one for each customer service portal. If you can, restrict the purpose of each email account to one specific kind of purpose.
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