When was the last time your e-mail inbox was empty?
I can’t remember either. I know the Getting Things Done gurus say it’s an essential step to reaching productive nirvana. But I just can’t reach it.
But look at it. I have less than 20 e-mails stashed in my inbox. The bulk are part of an e-course on content marketing that I subscribed to. And as soon as I’m done with this blog post, I’m reading all of them. Promise.
I confess that this doesn’t happen every day. Who has time for that?
So I set aside one day each week to take out the trash. I go through my e-mail inbox and mercilessly trash the e-mails that don’t matter. The rest I act upon or file in my archives. When I need them, search finds them very nicely when I do need them.
The key is to only do it once per week. Doing it daily is too easy to ignore or put off. Making e-mail reduction a weekly task gives me a better chance of actually doing it.
And thanks to a few more email management tips, it is much easier. I have fewer e-mails coming into my inbox. That means I can catch up on that e-course.
Oh wait, three new e-mails just arrived.
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