Gaining Control of Your Email is Simpler Than You Think
How many email messages clutter your inbox? Do you have hundreds, maybe thousands, of email messages stored in your inbox?
Don't feel bad. You're far from alone. Most of us receive a steady stream of email messages each day. We open and respond to the most important of these. However, we often leave the less pressing email messages for a latter day.
That latter day might never come. That's the problem.
Fortunately, Rene Shimada Siegel, writing for Inc. magazine, tackles this problem in a recent feature. She provides tips for people struggling to gain control of their email messages. Follow some of Siegel's better tips, and your cluttered inbox might soon be a thing of the past.
Don't be afraid of the “Delete” button
Siegel writes that the biggest factor leading to cluttered inboxes is our growing resistance to delete old messages. We hang onto email messages for months, even if we haven't actually looked at these particular messages for just as long.
It's long hoarding boxes after you move to a new home. If you haven't opened a box for a year, you probably don't need what's inside. Take the same approach with your email messages. Go on a deleting purge every few weeks. Get rid of those email messages that you haven't looked at for weeks or months.
You'll feel better after you do.
News aggregators are your friend
How much of the clutter in your inbox is made up of newsletters and news digests? Probably a lot. Fortunately, you can read most of these through news aggregators. Siegel recommends such aggregators as Google Reader and Flipboard.
Once you start accessing these newsletters and digests through aggregators, you can take steps to make sure that these same digests aren't also sent to your email inbox. Doing so will greatly reduce the clutter in your inbox.
Mobile cutting works
Think of how much time you spend every day waiting for a colleague to show up at lunch, sitting in waiting rooms or sitting on public transportation. Why not take this time to go on an inbox-deletion spree with your iPhone, iPad, or other mobile devices?
Those minutes that you spend waiting for something else to happen can add up during a day. If you spend them using your mobile device to delete old messages, you'll take a big step toward un-cluttering that clogged inbox.
Of course, some people don't mind having a cluttered inbox, but if you're one of those consumers who can't stand it when their inboxes crack the thousand-message mark, take action today: There's no reason to be plagued by a cluttered inbox.
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