Conquer Your Inbox, One Email At A Time

I think everyone struggles to get their inbox at bay. But here are some tips and tricks you can implement right away to help keep the mountain that is your email a foothill instead of Mount Everest.

+TOUCH IT ONCE

This means that when you’re approached with a task, an email, a text, or an assignment, you only touch it once. So many people waste time re-reading and re-evaluating tasks that they have to do. Instead of taking care of it right away, they’ll think “I’ll get to this later,” and put it off for another time. But later on when they decide to finally accomplish that task they have to re-evaluate and re-decide how they are going to respond, thus eating up precious time. This may not seem like a lot of time right now, but when you put off tasks that can easily be accomplished in seconds for a while, they add up and take away from time you could be doing something else, like taking a nap. 

+UNSUBSCRIBE RIGHT WHEN YOU GET THE EMAIL

Our inboxes are flooded with subscriptions, coupons, newsletters, and spam every single day. I find myself deleting the majority of my emails because they are just junk. But before you just delete the email only to get another one the next day, take the extra minute it takes to scroll down to the bottom of the email and hit the “unsubscribe” button. You’ll probably be directed to the website and may have to confirm your “unsubscription”, but in the long run, it will pay off. I promise.

+USE CANNED RESPONSES

Gmail has this AMAZING thing called “canned responses” and if you haven’t heard of it, you are wasting so much time. If you get emails that you respond to in typically the same manner over and over again, the next time you write out the email, save it as a canned response! So the next time you just have to insert the response and send it and you’re done! Total life saver.

+SWEET AND SIMPLE.

I think as a millennial, my instinct is to be super formal in emails. Writing drawn out responses and being overly nice, when I typically get a

“Great. See u tomorrow.

Sent from my iPhone.”

in reply. I’m being to learn that I just need to get to the point faster in emails. You can still be nice but maybe you don’t need to ask how every child of theirs is doing and how their vacation in the Hamptons was. Save that for the face to face meeting.