Monday, February 27, 2012

5 easy ways to get your inbox to zero

I'm constantly striving to have my unread emails total 0. It happens every day, but it takes daily upkeep. Here are five ways to make it easier to keep those unread emails at bay:

  1. Unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe. Anytime you find yourself deleting or archiving a newsletter or advertisement without opening it, take two seconds, open it and scroll to the bottom where there will be an unsubscribe link. Sometimes it's clearer than others where to click, but doing so and following whatever prompts appear will stop those types of emails from landing in your inbox in the first place.
  2. Filter. You might want to keep statement notices, certain newsletters or list serve digests for future reference or reading, but you don't want them cluttering up your inbox until then. Set up a filter to label them and have them skip your inbox and go straight to a folder for later.
  3. Post something like "No need to respond" at the bottoms of emails you send out that really don't require a response. 
  4. Belong to a Yahoo Group or other list serves? Consider setting up a filter (#2) or switching your membership to a daily or weekly digest of email instead of receiving every message as it gets posted.
  5. Turn off or reduce email notifications on your social networking sites liked LinkedIn or Goodreads. Do you really need to be notified about what your friends are reading every day or week? If you cared, you'd be on the sites and interacting there.
Do yourself a favor and stop your email overload before it starts, and getting to inbox zero will be much more achievable.

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