3 Tips for Taking Control of Your Email Inbox

August 27, 2015

By Susan Larsen, Marketing and Communications Coordinator, Standards for Excellence Institute

Staying on top of an ever-increasing, never-ending river of emails can sometimes feel impossible! An overflowing inbox causes serious problems for our productivity and just weighs us down. I’m so excited to share my tips about mastering your inbox at the upcoming Tech to Tell Your Story mini-conference on September 8. Attendees of the Making Email Work For You workshop will learn tricks in Outlook such as using categories, rules, flags, QuickParts, tasks, and more to organize, send and receive emails like a pro. We’ll be covering tools and tips to keep your Gmail in check as well. Below are some brief tips that are just a preview of what’s in store at this comprehensive session.

Unsubscribe. We all want to make sure we’re staying informed and on top of the latest industry trends. But if you’re doing so by subscribing to multiple e-newsletters, chances are they often get buried at the bottom of your inbox or eventually deleted. Invest some time in finding a good RSS feed reader, and add only your favorite feeds. All the articles you need to stay informed will be neatly organized in one place and waiting for you when you have time to focus on them. Afterwards, if you ever receive spam or an e-newsletter in your inbox, briefly review it to see if it is worthy enough for your feed. If not, promptly unsubscribe or mark as junk mail. We’ll talk more about RSS Readers in the Making Email Work For You workshop!
Respond immediately or flag for later. The easiest way to stay on top of your emails is to address them as soon as you see them, even if you can’t reply right away. If you know how to respond to a new email reply to it immediately and file it away or delete it. If you don’t, flag the email to respond by a defined date. I’ll be doing a tutorial of flags, categories and reminders during my workshop at the Tech to Tell Your Story mini-conference!
Don’t use email. There are a multitude of free and low-cost project-management and communication software available that are designed to streamline organization-wide collaboration. Outlook tasks, Microsoft OneNote, Communifire and Asana are just a few that are readily available and very easy to use. Alternately, if you have a quick question or response consider using instant messaging or even just picking up the phone or walking down to someone’s desk. The very best way to keep emails at a minimum is simply not to send one if it’s not necessary. Attend the Making Email Work For You workshop for a demonstration of some of these programs!

Register now for the Tech to Tell Your Story mini-conference, and don’t forget to attend the Making Email Work For You workshop. I hope to see you there!