Do you visit your mailbox every evening dreading how many new messages got through your spam filter? Then try the following steps prepared by the Open Forum website that will make you get rid of unnecessary red tape and increase your productivity.
Get rid of redundant messages
1. Unsubscribe to all commercial messages that appear in your inbox every day. If you ordered something five years ago from a company, and still periodically get notices, you can just delete it. But it is time consuming to clean out your inbox everytime before you start to work.
2. You probably use some of the many popular social media sites. However, they constantly send information to your inbox. Simply cancel them. You do not need a minute to minute update that someone new has added you as a friend, commented on your status or changed profile.
3. Do not fail to tag spam. Spam filters are quite effective in the detection of spam, but they are not perfect and sometimes something sneaks through. So be careful and mark every spam. The system learns to identify it and the next time you will have much less work.
4. Occasionally, some applications and especially downloading, require you to enter your email address. What could be easier than setting up an address just for these purposes? Commercial communications and irrelevant communication will no longer be mixed with you important emails.
Organize the remaining messages
5. The simplest way to organize your mails is to use filters that sort messages by sender or subject content.
6. Forget creating different folders so you can "hunt" for old information when you need it. Instead, set up an automatic email search function to use if you need the data again.
7. If you use a Gmail account or Google Apps, discover potential of the function of tabs, a relatively new feature. The only thing you have to remember is to check all tabs regularly.
Be ruthless
8. Be as brief as possible in your conversations. If you have finished a conversation and the person thanks you, do not reply. There is a direct correlation, the more messages you send, the more you get back.
9. If, in your case, you get similar messages regularly, create a predefined template that will reduce significantly the time spent by rewriting the same text.
10. Some emails do not need to be answered, or opened at all. Read the subject line, and if it is unimportant, do not open it. This is especially important when you are very busy. Your customers, suppliers and colleagues are the most important emails.
You will be surprised, but the tips above can reduce the volume of your emails by almost 25% and save you a lot of time. Do you have any other tips that you would add to the list?
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