Remember the days when mail consisted of envelopes and sheets of paper? How mountains of the stuff cluttered up the kitchen bench and table tops, bedside cabinets, and mailboxes? If you were particularly disorganised, the bills eventually sunk to the bottom of the piles, along with the bank statements! But even those who were on the ball were constantly sorting, filing, burning and shredding just to keep onto top of everything. Email was supposed to make everything so much easier – it did away with paper and envelopes, and it even came with friendly chimes to notify us when mail was ‘delivered.’ So what could possibly go wrong?
What did, and still does go wrong, is our digital mail piles up, unattended, every bit as much as the paper version. As the inbox grows ever fuller, we lose track of essential correspondence as quickly as we did snail mail. What’s even worse, is we have no visual reminder (think piles of papers) we need to attend to sorting the stuff! If this sounds like you, we have some essential tips for decluttering your email inbox so you can see the wood for the trees! Work at the following tasks, a little each day, and you’ll be surprised at how easy your inbox is to manage!
Hit ‘unsubscribe’
No one likes paper clogging up their physical mail box, which is why ‘No Junk Mail’ stickers were invented. The digital solution to reducing the sheer amount of mail coming into your inbox is to unsubscribe from emails of no interest. Start by looking through your last 50 emails. When you find any unsolicited ones, scroll to the bottom of the email and hit the ‘unsubscribe button.’ If the process of unsubscribing seems too difficult, click on the 3 dots at the top right of the email and select ‘block.’ Done and dusted! The secret, from there on in, is to unsubscribe or block unsolicited emails as soon as they hit your inbox!
Create a calendar memo
Quit using your in-box as a to-do list. If an email concerns an appointment, or something requiring your attention in the future, pop it into your digital calendar, along with all the necessary details, then confine the email to the bin! Your calendar will send you an email reminder when it’s time to attend to the matter.
In Outlook or Gmail:
· Open the email.
· Look for “Create Event” or “Add to Calendar” (in Gmail, it’s in the three-dot menu → Create event).
· The calendar entry will pull in the email subject and body automatically.
· Adjust the date, time, and reminders to suit.
In Apple Mail + Calendar:
· Highlight the date/time mentioned in the email (it usually appears underlined).
· Click it, then choose Add to Calendar.
· Edit details as needed.
File fanatic
Stop using your in-box as a filing cabinet. Instead, within your email system, create a series of labelled files (for example: ‘quotes,’ ‘medical reports,’ and ‘donation receipts.’) Shift relevant emails out of your in-box and into the relevant file as soon as you’ve read them. Once a year, sift through each file and delete any emails that are out of date.
Divide and rule
Did you know it’s possible to divide your email box into two sections: read and unread? When you do this, your attention is immediately drawn to the emails awaiting your attention. If you happen to open an email, but want it to remain in the unread section of your inbox, simply mark it as ‘unread.’
Star light, star bright
Highlight the emails you want to prioritise (such as bills to be paid or invitations to reply to) by tagging them with a coloured star (or other symbol depending on which email platform you use). Stars are a great visual memory-jogger!
By employing the tidy-techniques above, you can confidently aim to spend no more than 10 minutes a day on email housekeeping. That’s got to be easier than dealing to a pile of paper!
