Manage your email

Email has truly revolutionised communication. We can send and receive information almost instantly, reduce the amount of paper we use and, with the advent of smartphones, we can send email from nearly anywhere on the planet.

However, a recent survey revealed more than 60% of mail users have more than 100 messages in their inbox. If you are one of these people (who probably wouldn’t dream of leaving 100 letters in their mailbox or 100 items in their in-tray), here are some tips on how to keep your inbox clean.

Firstly, use a good spam filter. Ask your local ‘tech-xpert’ or IT guru to recommend one. On the subject of spam, be very careful who you give your email address to. Sale sites, retailers and news organisations can send a lot of emails. It can be a good idea to keep a separate email address to give to these people, which you can check at your leisure.

Use filters to sort and manager your email, and practice using the search tools in your email programme so that you can easily retrieve information from your saved emails.

Mass emails from friends. If you have friends who regularly send jokes or messages that you don’t actively read, ask them to remove you from their email list and only send you one-to-one emails.

Apply the one-touch principle to email – don’t open it unless you are going to deal with it. Once it is dealt with, archive it, or delete it.

Make good use of your smartphone. We spend a lot of time waiting – in lines at the supermarket, one the bus or train, on hold for a phone query for example – take those few minutes and use them to check your email.

If you have any other email tips, please share them on our GrownUps discussion boards.