Have you ever thought that managing your email feels like more of a burden than what it’s worth?
I know I have thought that and many days just felt overwhelmed even considering looking at it!
But here’s the truth: Email is a valuable tool that has actually revolutionized the way that we all work. As a Virtual Assistant it is an important part of daily communication with our clients. Imagine trying to run your business without it? When used correctly, email can be a terrific time saver and also a productivity tool.
By following these tips you’ll learn how to manage your email better and become more efficient.
1) Check Your Email Regularly
Get into the habit of checking your email on a regular schedule. Don’t go a long period of time without checking your inbox. And I don’t mean checking it every 5 minutes as doing that will take you out of your focused zone of servicing your clients. Check it once in the morning and again before the end of the day. Try to keep no more than 10 to 20 unread emails in your inbox at any given time.
2) Use Labels and Folders
Every email software gives you the ability to automatically put emails into folders and labels as they come through. Your stress levels will be greatly reduced if your emails get organized as they come in. Then you can go through each folder in order of importance and deal with them.
3) Read, Respond and File
Before email there was snail mail. You would open your mail, attend to and/or file away important items and throw the junk into the trash bin. Email should work the same way. Read, respond and and/or file it away depending on the email. I use Boomerang with my Gmail accounts (which is FREE) to get emails out of my inbox and out of my mind until they come due for a response and pop back up into my inbox on the date due.
4) Reduce Incoming Emails
Unsubscribe from newsletters you don’t read and turn off social media email notifications. Deleting all those emails everyday takes up a lot of time. If there are some newsletters you’d like to stay subscribed to but rarely read, set it up so they automatically go into a folder as they come in.
5) Create a “Junk” Email Address
If you like to read a lot online and subscribe to a bunch of newsletters and deal sites then create another email address for it. You can set up a free Gmail account and delete it at any time. This will help prevent your business email from getting flooded with unrelated emails. That or use a label like in #2 above to rule it out of sight and out of mind until you are ready to read. Then once a week, when I have some spare reading time, I check this email account out instead of seeing them in my inbox every day.
Start taking control of your email today instead of it controlling you! By taking some small action steps today you’ll find that your inbox will not be so overwhelming tomorrow 😉
