Successful Time Management For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 10

Controlling Email Overload

In This Chapter

• Managing email effectively
• Responding to email using less time
• Adding value to email messages

Some of you may receive less email because you communicate more on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Others of you may have gotten so frustrated with more email and spam that you vow to dramatically cut the volume of your email however you can. Whichever category you fit in to, this chapter helps you reduce, remove, and reclaim your email box.

Managing Email Effectively

If all the email correspondence you've ever received, sent, saved, responded to, forwarded, and deleted were turned into paper mail, your output alone could probably fill a U.S. Postal Office. Of course, you don't keep it all, but if you're like me, you let your email accumulate at times, perhaps until your system notifies you that your mailbox has exceeded its limit.

A good tool is only as good as the person wielding it. If you know how to use email properly, it can make your productivity output hum. If not, you can end up sabotaging your efforts to get things done. This section helps you rein in the all-too-often unwieldy paperless communication system.

Setting up filtering systems

Even militant time masters can lose hours of productive time to email — and much of that email isn't even work-related. Sometimes it's not even something you want to receive, yet you still have to dig your way through the sludge to see what the email is regarding. ...