Do you ever find yourself staring at an inbox which
you would happily disown but no you can't because
somewhere in there is the email you need? Well I
know I do and I think it might be time to surmount this
challenge. Gmail is one of the best email platforms I have ever
used web based other wise and it wasn't until I was
looking at a number somewhere over 4000 for my
personal inbox I had to admit to myself that I had
reached email overload and that I really need to do
something about it. So after doing the washing up, the laundry and
walking the dog I set to it. Only problem at this stage was that I
didn't know that
I didn't know what Gmail did so I spent a bit of time
looking around on the net and found some useful
insights into managing any inbox. The first slew of tips
I came across was for dealing with SPAM. It's
practically impossible to eliminate but you can adjust you spam
filters to be more effective and Gmail has a
handy feature where you can 'mark as spam' and
then Google will 'learn' what you do and don't want in
your inbox which saves time. Another good point with spam is to treat your email
address like you treat your phone number, would you
give your number out to just anybody? No. Same with
an email, so who should you trust with your details?
The best rule of thumb is to check if the website or
blog has a privacy policy, if it does it's a safe bet, if not move on.
The lack of a privacy policy suggests that
the website can and probably will 'share' or sell your
details with the highest bidder to do who knows what
with! So in summary only give an email address to a
web site or blog which wants to keep your details
safe, if this is the case the will make it easy to find the privacy
policy. Excellent we are now in a much cleaner inbox with it
being spam free and all. Trouble is I've still got an ever
growing list of correspondence from friends, family,
extended family, work, work and business contacts,
groups, social networks and memberships I'm part of.
It's enough to make me want to tear out my hair especially as there is
always something more
important or just something more interesting to do. Is
there a solution? Yes! Folders and this cannot be
stressed enough, folders, folders, folders. What this
allows you to do is effectively separate all the
different elements of your email life. It is possible to set your
preference's in such a way that any incoming
mail from mom will go directly into one folder 'family'
for example while everything from the office can go
straight into a folder called 'work' or whatever you
wish to call it. Personally I have the folders set up but
will do any moving manually so that something doesn't slip through the
cracks so to be speak. And then there is archiving. This is a useful
way of not
getting bogged down in what was happening two
weeks or two years ago. All the emails are still there
should you need to get them and this task is made
light work with Gmail's handy search mail function. It
just files them away in deeper storage allowing you to stay where you
need to be which is firmly in the
present. This function can be set to occur
automatically (my favourite) when an email gets to
say two weeks old it gets archived, which is good
motivation and makes sure I do something about
here, in the present. Word to this wise concerning archiving. If using this at
work with a work specific email then do be careful
what is going in your emails, in fact most work emails
are archived with or without your expressed
participation. The reason this is important for you is
that if for any reason you end up in court for a work related reason
lawyers love jumping into the email
archive to see if there is anything to work with,
especially as sarcasm or in jokes can have their
meanings twisted by any half decent lawyer building
a case. Best thing to do here is to maintain
professionalism. And I think the most underrated thing I have heard is
check your emails twice a day, no more. Turn off the
notification noise and close the tab or window. It's
email, if someone really needs to reach you they can
phone, otherwise get back to them at a certain every
time. Doing this not only stops distractions which frees up your time
and in doing so makes you more
productive but also helps create your continuity,
people know when to expect a response and because
you can focus on that response it will be of a better
quality!
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