Have you ever dreaded opening your email inbox? It’s okay — we’ve all been there. Sometimes, it seems like emails keep piling and piling up, and answering them is often a time-consuming task. To make matters worse, email scams and unwanted subscriptions can turn the inbox into the wild west. It can be difficult to sift through the noise and find the messages you’re looking for.
That’s why we want to share some of our tips for taming your email inbox and making it more manageable! Here are our top five ways to take back your inbox.
Schedule Time to Answer Emails
Answering and deleting emails is a part of your job, so you should schedule it like you would any other task. Set a designated time for taming your email inbox, that way you can focus all of your energy on the task at hand.
Don’t Be Afraid to Delete
Sometimes it can be hard to let go. But, if you really want your email to be more manageable, you might have to start being selective about which emails you keep. Start making a habit of deleting or archiving emails once you no longer need them. (Check out the section on apps to find out how some software can make it even easier to clear your inbox!)
Unsubscribe
Chances are, we’re all subscribed to at least one email list we can do without. Subscriptions tend to pile up. You might have just given your email to access gated content once, or maybe you were automatically signed up and didn’t realize it. Either way, there are plenty of subscriptions you don’t need. Go through and unsubscribe from anything that goes unread most of the time.
Try a New App
Automation is a friend, not a foe, especially regarding simple, repetitive tasks like sorting and maintaining an email. One automation app we love is Zapier. With apps like Zapier, your email management strategy can be simplified. Take saving attachments for example. If you command Zapier to automatically save email attachments to a specific place, you can delete old emails without worrying about losing attached documents.
Choosing apps that integrate well with your email is also important. Calendly, for example, integrates with your email so that you can schedule meetings without leaving your inbox. Aero also plays well with email. In fact, you can forward emails from your inbox directly to Aero!
Take An Email Vacation
Are you still feeling overwhelmed by your email inbox? Before you take any of these steps to tame it, you might want to take a day off. Give yourself a No Email Day before you dive into the deep end of email management. Set up an automatic reply so that any clients or coworkers who try to contact you will know when you’ll be back to check your mail.
We all get overwhelmed by the inbox sometimes. So, take a step back and then tackle the problem head-on. Sometimes, all you need is a little spring cleaning to get on top of your workflow. Make a resolution to take control of your email inbox before the year’s out — and let us know how you take the stress out of emailing down below!
