How to prevent letters from overwhelming you

There are two categories of people. Some have complete order in everything: letters are sorted, icons on the desktop are arranged. Others cannot open their mailbox without fear, because there is a whole wave of unread letters, of which there are more and more every day. They are, however, easy to deal with.

A simple parsing of letters will not correct the situation if the mailbox looks like an overflowing closet, the door of which you open with closed eyes so that nothing falls out. You need to change your approach to working with mail. Then you can spend more efficiently the time that is usually spent on an endless stream of new messages - on more important tasks.

To get off the ground, first ask yourself two questions:

Why do you receive a lot of emails?
What prevents you from quickly disassembling them?

Based on your answers, get down to solving the problem and use a few helpful tips along the way.

Make decisions

A blockage in your mailbox can indicate a problem with decision making. Many people are simply unwilling to take responsibility. They postpone the questions that need to be answered until later in order to solve everything in a more relaxed atmosphere. Or they find other excuses for themselves, just not to send a response letter now.

In order not to start each email with an apology for being late with the answer, that the letter got lost among others or got into spam (and in fact remained a silent reproach in the inbox, patiently waiting for the moment when you will open it again), work on yourself: make decisions.

Make it a rule to open a letter, immediately do what it requires of you, and immediately write a response. And don't click on the cross until the mail is sent.

Get rid of excess

You can easily save yourself from receiving some letters:

Unsubscribe from unnecessary mailings that you have stopped paying attention to for a long time. This is a matter of a few seconds and a couple of clicks: unread letters with advertising materials will no longer accumulate in the mailbox.
Disable notifications from social networks and various web services.
Redirect letters that you receive to personal mail from clients to another mailbox, indicating the address on the website of your company. Another way out is to create a separate feedback form.

In a word, do everything possible so that mail does not become a black hole that indiscriminately sucks in everything: both necessary and unnecessary.

Customize filters

If you need newsletters to find out about the best materials from your favorite media or discounts in online stores, you can leave them. But remove from the folder with live inbox using filters. The mail service, using them, will send letters to the necessary folders by itself.

The basis for filtering can be the sender's address or, for example, the keywords contained in the body of the message. It all depends on what kind of letters you would like to remove from the main mail folder.

Find another task manager

The mailbox should not replace your classic notebook to-do list or your scheduler application. As soon as you receive a letter, and along with it a new case, transfer it from the mail to your to do list.

Dictate the answers

If the answers are difficult for you due to the fact that you do not like the process of writing letters, go the other way. Try using the dictation function: the technique will record what you want to say on its own. And for the least conservative people on your contact list, you can even respond with the help of videos attached to the letter.

Open mail on schedule

The advice is not relevant for everyone, because often you need to be in touch 24/7. However, it may still be useful to some.

Set aside time frames for mailing during the day. Then answer all the letters that came during your absence at once.

Don't turn mail into a notebook

Phone numbers, passwords, addresses - all this should not be stored in the bowels of the mailbox, but should be at hand: in a notebook, in the contact list on a smartphone, on stickers pasted at the workplace. Transfer the necessary information from the mail to where it will be easier for you to find it: it is still not very convenient to use the search by letters all the time.

Also, don't send note letters to yourself. Many people do this by writing down information in the mail that needs to be remembered. Add pictures to attachments that you want to save. They accumulate letters in the mail with links to articles that you want to read later, when the time comes.

As a result, there are so many such letters that they lose their meaning. They never return to them later, because they move down the list - and are soon forgotten.

Use Tumblr or Pinterest to store beautiful photos, and write notes in special applications.

By following these rules, you will be able to maintain order in your mailbox and optimize the time spent on working with mail.