Email Techniques
I was asked how I manage the flood of e-mails I receive every day. With my e-mail addresses in plain site across many web sites, I am routinely bombarded with SPAM. Even after my bulk filters trap a lot of the unwanted contacts, I still have quite a few to open and respond to appropriately.
The trick to good e-mail management is to never treat your inbox as a storage area. Your inbox should only hold the items that are on today’s “to-do” list. Everything else should be filed away after you have taken whatever action was needed. The more messages you have in your inbox files, the less you will get accomplished.
Many of us get the FYI type messages from people who want us to know where they are in some common endeavor. Committee meeting notes are routinely distributed to everyone as are notices about articles someone thinks we should read. I subscribe to several electronic newsletters and get several issues a week and this doesn’t include the personal messages from friends and relatives.
The e-mail clutter that most accounts hold comes from the ever increasing storage limits that are provided with most free services. A typical inbox storage size has reached 2 GB which is simply monstrous considering it’s supposed to be only for new mail.
What this has done to most people is slow down their productivity. With huge limits they see no reason to move anything to another location. The down side to this is trying to find something you want to use. Instead of it being put away in a designated spot for easy retrieval, it will be mixed in with the hodge-podge of other incomplete tasks. This is a recipe for disaster. Your attention can be diverted by any number of items you look at while trying to find the one item that was important to you when you started the search.
Consider your e-mail inbox to be your desk. If you just pile items on top of each other as they come to you, the chances are that you’ll accomplish very little and that only with great effort. If, on the other hand, your desk is kept tidy, it will be ready for your task at hand without distractions. As e-mails arrive, deal with them and then file them away in properly divided folders. With most programs you can designate e-mails from particular addresses to be delivered directly to the folder instead of your inbox. This is the system I use for much of my correspondence. Some folders capture new messages according to the subject line or another equally unique item.
Take a day to empty your existing inbox and then rigorously defend its right to be virtually empty. You will be pleasantly surprised at how much easier it is to handle your correspondence when you don’t have the weight of yesterday's business hanging over your desk.
Mike Myklin is an e-commerce owner specializing in Internet Marketing. This article is archived at www.myklin.com
The trick to good e-mail management is to never treat your inbox as a storage area. Your inbox should only hold the items that are on today’s “to-do” list. Everything else should be filed away after you have taken whatever action was needed. The more messages you have in your inbox files, the less you will get accomplished.
Many of us get the FYI type messages from people who want us to know where they are in some common endeavor. Committee meeting notes are routinely distributed to everyone as are notices about articles someone thinks we should read. I subscribe to several electronic newsletters and get several issues a week and this doesn’t include the personal messages from friends and relatives.
The e-mail clutter that most accounts hold comes from the ever increasing storage limits that are provided with most free services. A typical inbox storage size has reached 2 GB which is simply monstrous considering it’s supposed to be only for new mail.
What this has done to most people is slow down their productivity. With huge limits they see no reason to move anything to another location. The down side to this is trying to find something you want to use. Instead of it being put away in a designated spot for easy retrieval, it will be mixed in with the hodge-podge of other incomplete tasks. This is a recipe for disaster. Your attention can be diverted by any number of items you look at while trying to find the one item that was important to you when you started the search.
Consider your e-mail inbox to be your desk. If you just pile items on top of each other as they come to you, the chances are that you’ll accomplish very little and that only with great effort. If, on the other hand, your desk is kept tidy, it will be ready for your task at hand without distractions. As e-mails arrive, deal with them and then file them away in properly divided folders. With most programs you can designate e-mails from particular addresses to be delivered directly to the folder instead of your inbox. This is the system I use for much of my correspondence. Some folders capture new messages according to the subject line or another equally unique item.
Take a day to empty your existing inbox and then rigorously defend its right to be virtually empty. You will be pleasantly surprised at how much easier it is to handle your correspondence when you don’t have the weight of yesterday's business hanging over your desk.
Mike Myklin is an e-commerce owner specializing in Internet Marketing. This article is archived at www.myklin.com
posted by Mike Myklin at 6:42 PM
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