Something that always weighs on my shoulders is the current state of my email inbox. It sounds like such a first world problem! But the truth is, email is the most reliable and quickest form of formal communication nowadays. I personally love email and use it every single day without fail. It's how I organize my schedule (through google calendar) and how I am able to stay on top of things. The absolute worst thing ever is checking your phone right at the end of the day and seeing 800 emails waiting to be answered. I have to have my inbox at zero every day, or else I truly can't fall asleep. Here are my tips for managing your inbox and making sure every night you too, can hit inbox zero:
1. Create labels for everything. I have about 100 different labels under my gmail account. In gmail, you can actually prioritize your inbox into 3 different categories: regular, social and promotions. Every email that you get is automatically sorted into one of those three so you don't even have to do the work! As well, I have my own personal labels: work, financial, church, personal, blog, school, e.t.c. Every email of mine gets saved and put into a label so that I can always quickly go back and search through a specific category if I ever need to bring up an old memo.
2. Make use of the star button. I love the star button for many reasons. One, it acts as my digital to-do list. If an email needs responding to, or some sort of information to be looked up in order to respond, I star it. That way, I know I can come back to it later and it's automatically put in it's own special spot where I know I'll definitely see it. I always check my "starred" label to see if I have any remaining emails, so it's good to put important messages in a place that I know I'll see them! Also, anything with important scheduling information that I don't have time to upload to my calendar, I star as well. As I go down the list and start responding to emails, I "un-star" the email which is synonymous with checking something off your to-do list. Yay for being productive!
3. Unsubscribe and don't be afraid to spam. I can't tell you how many years I wasted archiving Twitter, Facebook and other various social media emails JUST IN CASE I needed them for something. The truth is, nobody is going to need information on who favorited your tweet July 2013... just saying. I finally used my head and immediately subscribed from all of my social media accounts. I only get notifications from my phone now- emails are unescessary and just add to the inbox stress. My "social" tab is nearly empty with the exception of Goodreads emails, ha. I love their book newsletters! There are a whole bunch of websites that will do the unsubscribing for you if you really don't feel like doing it.
4. Dedicate a small amount of time to emails every day. Nobody has time to sit around all day and check their email. I like checking once in the morning and once at night- this is the time where I'm actually sitting down and actively responding to emails. I'm not counting the times throughout the day where I check and categorize new emails. Which leads me to...
5. Funnel everything as it comes through. As soon as you get the notification that you have a new email, immediately open the app and scan it over. If it's important, STAR the email and then label it to whatever category it belongs in. If it's able to be deleted or spammed, then do so. You don't need to waste your time with irrelevant emails! Sometimes if I have a long car ride, I'll draft emails on my phone but won't actually send them. I read them over later at my morning or night email checks and make sure there are no spelling errors or if I need to attach any files. You seriously don't want to let your emails build up over time. If you think, oh I'll just read or look over this later, that's not going to happen. It's going to get lost in the next batch of emails that come in! Then you'll end up with a whole load of emails to delete, which makes everything seem 10x harder to get organized.
6. Choose the right app. I think having the right app for your email does wonders with how you organize it. Personally, the gmail app is the one that works the best for me. It has every feature from the desk top version and makes it easier to organize everything. I don't like the Apple mail app... it confuses me! Gmail is clean cut and simple. However, there's also a ton of other great apps out there that could potentially work for you.
Hopefully these tips help get you to "inbox zero." The world is a much happier place when everyone's emails are able to be efficient and work as intended- a simpler form of communication!
Thanks for reading!
-Ashley Ann
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