4 TIPS TO REDUCE INBOX CLUTTER
Email is an essential business resource, but it also has the potential to be a real time suck.
Time is money, and in business sometimes it's your most valuable resource. It's too important to waste.
Email is supposed to increase productivity, not hamper it – so here are four quick tips you can put in place right now to reduce some of that inbox clog!
1. Unsubscribe
Most of us have separate work and personal email accounts, but it is still easy for the work account to get clogged up with unnecessary emails. Did you sign up for a newsletter or email alert that is no longer interesting or relevant? Unsubscribe. Don’t waste time deleting it every month, or worse, risk getting distracted by some sneaky online shopping because you just received the latest sale offer from your favourite store!
2. Remember the phone?
The convenience of email, direct messaging and SMS has fooled a lot of us into thinking it's a quicker option than making a phone call. Often, it’s not. If you need to get a quick response, make the call. Don’t send an email and spend the next 30 minutes checking your inbox for a reply. It’s all wasted time. Something complicated to explain? By the time you compose that 10 paragraph email, you could have phoned it in. Before you send an email, ask yourself: will it be quicker to just call?
3. Read it, file it, or delete it
Don’t just leave emails sitting in your inbox. If you can identify from the subject line that it’s spam, delete it immediately. Set yourself designated times throughout the day to deal with emails and during those times: read it and respond, read it and file it, or read it and delete it.
4. Send less email
The more email you send, the more you’ll receive. Makes sense.
Think twice before you CC or hit Reply All – is it necessary? If so, go ahead. But if not, don’t. Remember, you’ll likely get multiple replies.
This also ties in with tip 2 – rather than sending a string of 10 emails, it may be quicker to make one phone call.
Dayarne Smith
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