Amazingly Efficient Email Management

This post was just going to be titled 'Email Management' but that's not very exciting is it - and I have to say I am so impressed with my new system of email management.

I have tried various systems over the years including:

- regular weeding, i.e. unsubscribing, of newsletters that I don't read (I still do this)

- tagging emails

- filtering emails (both of these are part of the new system)

- only answering emails certain times of the day (this really does work but my business being a techy one so much of the correspondence is email and I didn't want to export all of my emails to my project planner and clutter it up)

The new system

What's the new system then? I can hear you asking.  Well it is simply this:

• ensure that you have different emails for work and personal stuff.  In fact I have two main jobs so I have three email addresses that I use regularly - two work and one personal
  
• set up rules within your email program.  All email programs will do this but sometimes they are called filters.  I use Gmail so I set up filters.
  
• filter your emails to go into their respective folders.  So I leave all personal mail in the inbox and work mail is filtered out into named folders.  Then when I am working on a specific job, I can just work from that email box and see emails relating only to that work.

Simple isn't it?  But I am so impressed by how effective it is.  Although I do flip out to look at other emails in other folders, it is much easier to be more disciplined if you can only see emails relating to your current work.  And I have definitely become more focussed by organising my emails this way. And it means I can stay working from my email box without feeling overwhelmed.