Are you deluged with daily emails? Is your Inbox full of emails you never get time to read?

- 2 million emails are sent every second,
- 62% of us check work emails at home or on holiday,
- a third of office workers suffer from "email stress.

Do you waste time on your emails rather than getting on with more important work? Are you checking your email throughout the day?


Take Control

Take control of your Inbox so that you don't waste time and can get on with the more important tasks.

- Switch off the email alert so you don't get distracted every time an email comes into your inbox and are tempted to go and check it.

- Only check your email two or three times a day. Unless you need to respond to customers as soon as an email hits your inbox, you really only need to check your inbox a couple of times a day, morning and afternoon.

- Check email after you've achieved your first important task of the day. You're less likely to get side-tracked early on in the day.

- Set aside a specific time to deal with and respond to emails - 15-30 minutes at a time. Don't jump straight in and respond to the first one. Quickly scan them for urgent, non-urgent and reading.

- Do it, delegate it, dump it. Don't keep coming back to an email or putting it to one side 'for later'. Flag it if you don't need to deal with it there and then and get on with the next one.

- Set a time limit - this is critical if you don't want to get totally side-tracked and waste more time than necessary.

- Many of us spend far longer responding to email than we really need. If all it requires is a quick one-liner or a couple of minutes, don't spend hours on it. Get through the quick responses in one go.

- Let go - don't get emotionally attached to your email - you don't need to read and respond to every single one and you don't need to keep them forever and a day 'just in case'.


Keep Your Inbox Clear

It doesn't have to be empty but you need to know your emails have been dealt with appropriately and in a timely manner.  The clearer it is, the easier it is to manage.

- Create folders and filters to organise your incoming mail - move it directly into a folder by subject or sender as it comes in.  This helps clear out some of the 'clutter'.

- Reduce what comes in - only subscribe to mailing lists and newsletters that read on a regular basis. Unsubscribe from those you no longer read.  Make it easy to subscribe and unsubscribe from your own newsletters - use an autoresponder like Aweber.

- Use different email addresses for business, personal, newsletters etc. Check the important ones regularly and the less important, less often.

- Once you've dealt with an email - delete it or file/archive it.

- Plan your time for emails in the same way you plan the rest of your time and it doesn't have to take over your life!

Get additional tips, ideas and practical strategies to increase your productivity when you register for the Take Control Of Your Time e-course.

Find out how to address your own specific email challenges with a free Strategy Session and see the difference you can make.

Until next month.