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I’ve got 2000 emails in my inbox….now what?!?
Posted By : Ellen Martin on 29-Jun-2010When email takes over it’s sometimes a little difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel. When you have hundreds or thousands of emails in your inbox, where do you begin to take control? Some issues that add to the stress are that you may not be sure if there is something important in all that old email that has been accumulating. You may not have any system in place for filing away important information that you need to keep. You may be reacting to email alerts every couple of minutes as they come into your inbox.
The first step is to decide what you are trying to accomplish by organizing your email and developing a new system. For example, I try to keep my inbox as empty as possible. At the moment I have 9 emails in my inbox, all of which require detailed thought and response. What do you want to see when you open up your email program?
One of the best ways to cut back on the number of new emails you’re receiving is to stop them from coming in the first place. Are you receiving notices from organizations you are no longer interested? Are you receiving newsletters that you don’t have the time to read? Ask to be removed from these lists. Another area to examine is email coming from co-workers or colleagues that you may not need to receive. If you consistently get reports that you don’t need to get, ask to be taken off the distribution list. If you are being copied regularly on correspondence that you have no interest in or have no involvement with, again, ask to be removed from the distribution of that information.
I would like to hear from you about what challenges you are facing with email. Send an email to me or post a comment.
Happy Organizing!
10 Responses to “I’ve got 2000 emails in my inbox….now what?!?”
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One of the challenges I have is I’ve noticed when I look to unsubscribe, there’s no way to do it! I thought that was illegal? It’s happened several times that there’s no “unsubscribe” or “manage subscription”, just nothing. It’s so frustrating!
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2000 emails!? I hope that never happens. I think it’s the notices from forums, FB and Twitter that make up so much of my incoming mail. Have to find a way to deal with that better. Thanks for the reminders! Lynn
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email mania!
keeping the inbox clean, clear and organized is such a gift to the mind. When it is clear you can focus on what you really want to focus on~ your life, your business, etc..
I’m off to clean up my inbox!
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Personal Folders! Gotta love the Personal Folders! sorting, organizing, putting things in their place…
Thanks, Ellen!
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This is an issue facing every single one of my clients. So much so, I developed a workshop around the topic. Delete is my friend!
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Ellen,
I can relate. It seems like it’s a major accomplishment to get the inbox down to zero.
Great tips.
Write on!~
Lisa
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Ellen, the simple things are the best. Thanks for the reminder that what I can do to help the clutter in my inbox is to stop them from coming in the first place. I spent 30 minutes unsubscribing to emails that I am no longer interested in. What a relief. I’m sure it will save me 30 minutes each day of no longer being stressed about my inbox clutter. Thanks for the common sense advice.
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I will admit that I spend far too much time trying to organize my inbox. I get excited when there is no scroll bar but that rarely happens. I have the same problem Linda has, far too much spam without an “unsubcribe” button. I don’t want to join a program filter like Boxbe because I am scared of losing leads through Aweber. Any ideas?
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I don’t like to unsubscribe from some things I want to keep eyeballs on, but I absolutely do categorize and make very liberal use of the delete button, LOL. Great ideas, Ellen.
Sue Painter
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Ellen, I use Google Apps so all of my emails are delivered to one location and I use a lot of filters to file email as it arrives. There’s a feature you can implement so that only folders with “unread mail” are displayed. It really helps to prioritize mail before I even see it. I had a professional set up the email boxes, then trained my VA to set up the filters. Now she goes in twice a day and manages what she can and leaves the rest for me. I usually only have about 10 emails to read a day.
As for Facebook, forums and Twitter, I have a filter for those and I usually just do a cursory look for anything really important and once a week my VA deletes them all.
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