I’ve got 2000 emails in my inbox….now what?!?
June 29, 2010
When email takes over it’s sometimes a little difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel. When you have hundreds or thousands of emails in your inbox, where do you begin to take control? Some issues that add to the stress are that you may not be sure if there is something important in all that old email that has been accumulating. You may not have any system in place for filing away important information that you need to keep. You may be reacting to email alerts every couple of minutes as they come into your inbox.
The first step is to decide what you are trying to accomplish by organizing your email and developing a new system. For example, I try to keep my inbox as empty as possible. At the moment I have 9 emails in my inbox, all of which require detailed thought and response. What do you want to see when you open up your email program?
One of the best ways to cut back on the number of new emails you’re receiving is to stop them from coming in the first place. Are you receiving notices from organizations you are no longer interested? Are you receiving newsletters that you don’t have the time to read? Ask to be removed from these lists. Another area to examine is email coming from co-workers or colleagues that you may not need to receive. If you consistently get reports that you don’t need to get, ask to be taken off the distribution list. If you are being copied regularly on correspondence that you have no interest in or have no involvement with, again, ask to be removed from the distribution of that information.
I would like to hear from you about what challenges you are facing with email. Send an email to me or post a comment.
Happy Organizing!
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