3 Fast Ways To Tame Your Unruly Inbox
Do you need help coping with the
mountain of emails waiting for you each morning? We sat down with Dharmesh
Mehta, senior director of Outlook.com for some quick tips to overcome the
clutter.
You need to be strict with your
inbox.
According to Dharmesh Mehta, Senior
Director of Outlook.com, the average inbox-throttled person receives a staggering 15,000 emails per year--that's
about 41 every day. Without the proper planning and rules, you'll be lucky to
make it past your morning coffee.
So how do you combat the
never-ending stream of information and separate the emails you actually want to
read from the trash? We sat down with Mehta, who gave three easy tips to start
organizing your life:
Sometimes you just have to say no.
Get rid of the newsletters (that you probably never signed up for) and the
endless stream of advertisements by telling your inbox you don't want them in
the first place.
"If you're someone that wants
to get your inbox organized," Mehta says. "Then one of the things
you've got to start with is just helping your inbox know that these are things
I don't want."
So be clear about what you want and
don't want and give your inbox the message:
"Get rid of it now, get rid of
it forever."
You've just started emailing with
your new friend John. But does your email know that you know John, and that his
messages are important to you? Not unless you say something.
"Keep your address book up to
date," Mehta says. "Whether that's you manually updating it, or by
connecting your address to things like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter so it's
got your latest friends and people you care about."
A current address book tells your
inbox who's important and who's not. This should ensure that the right mail
gets to the top of the pile--and help you get on with your day.
Not all email demands an immediate
response. However, it's easy to lose track of saved messages once they've been
sitting in your inbox for a few days. The answer: Flag the message.
"If you're in your outlook.com
inbox and you flag a message, it just pops to the top and it stays flagged
until you stay it's done," Mehta says. "It's kind of like a mini
to-do list that lets you know, 'Hey I gotta take care of these
messages--they're super critical.'"
Another good way of keeping your
inbox organized is diverting emails from certain people or services directly to
folders for optimal organization.
Whatever your strategy for making
sense of the daily barrage of emails, always keep one thing in mind: no matter
how bad it may seem, you can always reclaim your inbox.
By: Miles
Kohrman http://www.fastcompany.com/3013745/work-smart/3-fast-ways-to-tame-your-unruly-inbox?partner=newsletter
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