In our professional and private lives, email is one of the most important communication methods, which means that a lot of people simply cannot avoid using it. But, if you never got used to managing all the messages you receive, you might now have a completely messy account, as well as hundreds of unread messages, ones that you actually do not need at all.
If you found yourself in this situation, you might be wondering – how can I efficiently and properly manage my email account? Luckily for all individuals looking for an answer to this question, this article might be able to assist you. Let’s take a closer look at the 8 tips you can utilize for properly managing your inbox:
1. Firstly, Remove What You Do Not Need
Before you do any other thing we mention in this list, it is important for you to delete what you no longer need. Hence, open up your account and firstly go to the ‘Promotional’ and ‘Social’ tabs since there will probably be emails there that you won’t need. Additionally, while you are doing so, you should unsubscribe from any promo or social newsletters that you do not need or want.
Once you’re finished, you can move on to the ‘Main’ inbox. Naturally, you’ll want to keep the ones you need, but if there are any that you no longer need, you should delete them. Again, if you have any subscription that you no longer want to receive, unsubscribe from the service.
2. Have Two Accounts
If there is one thing that you should take away from this article, it is the importance of having two email addresses. Why? Well, first of all, you’ll be able to separate your private and professional emails, which will make everything more manageable for you when talking about managing your account.
Additionally, by doing so, you’ll probably never miss out on all the important work messages that you have to see or reply to, which means that you’ll be able to save a lot of time. Lastly, you’ll be able to use the accounts for subscribing to different websites on the Internet, which will once again help you with managing your inbox properly.
3. Use a Program That Can Help
You could also opt for using a program such as clean.email that can assist you with managing your inboxes. For instance, with it, you can organize hundreds if not thousands of messages, you can automate some tasks, and you can view several inboxes at the same time. Hence, you’ll be able to faster manage your inbox.
4. Create Labels And Sub-Labels
Creating labels will do wonders for your managing efforts, which is why you should definitely use them! For instance, if you are utilizing your private account, you could make different labels where you’ll store the messages you wish to keep. Hence, if one of your family members or relatives send you emails regularly, you could make a label ‘Family’.
On the other hand, when utilizing your professional account, you can make labels such as ‘projects’, ‘boss’, ‘colleagues’, and so on. If you choose to do this, you’ll not only successfully manage all the information you got, but, it’ll assist you with finding the ones you need faster.
5. Schedule When You’ll Process Your Account
You should also schedule during what time you’ll process your email. Now, you should do this once a day, which means that you could take care of your email during a break or lunch at work while commuting to your office, as well as when you are waiting in line to get your coffee.
Of course, you can choose to take care of it in the mornings or evenings, however, by doing so while also doing other things, you’ll be able to save even more time, and more importantly, you’ll be saving time while finishing other things – which is a really good way to multitask.
6. Have a Day For Responding
There will always be messages that you’ll need to respond to each day, however, if there are some that you do not need to respond to right away, determine on which day you’ll do that. Why? Well, you’ll be able to read it, process it, and then have some time to think about what you’ll write back. But, there is one more thing that can help you manage your inbox, which leads us to our next point…
7. Utilize the ‘One-Minute Strategy’
You are probably wondering – what is the one-minute strategy? Basically, it implies that, if it wakes approximately a minute to reply to an email, you should do it and when you are done, archive the message. You should never allow it to stay in your inbox for years if you do not need to.
You’ll want to ensure that you use this strategy for the messages that you can reply to within a minute since this will assist you with clearing a large number of messages in a really short time. During the entire process, you can also categorize the messages, which will only help you further.
8. Unsubscribe From Newsletters
Let’s be honest, you probably do not read the newsletters from companies or platforms that you stopped using, and if so, ensure that you unsubscribe from their services. When I did this, it made everything else so much easier, because I no longer had to delete the newsletters, which means that I saved a lot of time – and so will you!
Conclusion
As you were able to learn, there is a wide range of tips that you can utilize. Not only will the aforementioned tips help you with managing your account and ensuring that you do not miss out on an important email, but it will also help you save a lot of time and effort, especially since it will help you find everything you need right away.
Hence, now that you are aware of all the things you can do to efficiently managing your email account, you might not want to lose any more time. Instead, you should go back to the beginning of this list and start with the first tip we mentioned – which is deleting the emails you no longer need.