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How to Tame Crazy Email Inbox: 5 Hacks to Get More Organized

How to Tame Crazy Email Inbox: 5 Hacks to Get More Organized

Remember the first time you created an email account? Do you remember that empty white space that was so fresh you couldn’t wait to start receiving mail? It wasn’t until when promotional newsletters, emails from your manager, and Youtube links of cat videos sent by your mom started to bombard your entire inbox. And before you knew it, inbox zero quickly escalated to a thousand unread messages. We know you’re tired of it. In this article, tame the stress of your crazy inbox by following these five hacks to help you tame your email inbox.

Schedule a time for checking emails

Humans get easily distracted. The second our phone vibrates, we tend to drop everything and check our phone for notifications. We’re somehow designed to be like that. More so for emails, checking messages every now and then at any time of the day can consume precious time and productivity. 

With this in mind, schedule an hour or two (depends on the number of emails you get) to sit down on your computer to read and respond to emails. Reserve that time for working on your emails only. As for the rest of the day, turn off your email notifications so you can just focus on work. This way, you won’t find yourself frequently checking your mail again and again.

Make a habit of deleting or archiving messages

Once you’re done reading a message, decide whether to delete or archive it. Most likely, marketing newsletters are sent to the trash when they don’t have value. If you think there are messages that you’ll someday use for referencing purposes, send them to the archive folder. To tame your email inbox, make this a habit and your future self will thank you.

Unsubscribe buttons are your friends

If you’re reading this blog, chances are your inbox is bombarded with an enormous amount of marketing newsletters. Do yourself a favor and start unsubscribing to these newsletters! Especially to the ones that you just ignore or delete all the time. Lucky for you, Gmail has integrated an unsubscribe button for cases like this. You can find this button on the upper right hand of your opened email messages.

You can find Gmail’s unsubscribe button on the upper right hand of your opened email messages, as shown above.

Get a task manager to get you more organized

People tend to spend a lot of time on their email inbox because they use it as a task list. For emails with tasks that will take you much of your time to reply or accomplish, don’t let those emails just decay in your inbox. Get a task manager instead. With task managers, you have the option to input tasks that are instructed to you in an organized list. Any.do, Todoist and Google Tasks are great tools for managing everyday tasks. They will help you stay on track and get your to-do list in order and organized. You can kiss procrastination goodbye!

Create a separate email for login accounts and for email correspondence

If you use the same email account for responding to your boss at work and for your Netflix premium membership, then I think it’s time for you to create another account to separate those two. Having two separate accounts for these two different purposes is a terrific way to tame your email inbox and have a systematic structure for your incoming mails.

Other than that, you should also consider your security and privacy. It’s dangerous if you use the same email for work and for your login accounts. Since people have the option to use their email address to log in to their personal profile or account, hackers are free to use this against you. Hackers can easily use your email address to reset your password or go on a hacking spree on all of your accounts. That just might be everyone’s worst nightmare!

Given these points, start to reserve a time for checking mail and get into the habit of deleting or archiving messages. Start unsubscribing to newsletters that don’t matter to you. To help you get more organized, start utilizing a task manager for your tasks. And lastly, create a different email account to separate account logins and email correspondence. Follow these five hacks and you’ll get your inbox, or your life rather, back in order.