Digital Declutter — Email
Five tips for taming the chaos lurking in your inbox
How many messages do you have in your inbox? 100? 1,000? 10,000? When it comes to your inbox, chances are you either keep it clean and clear or you’ve given up and the messages are piling up. I’m guessing you’re the latter if you’re reading this article.
Have you ever thought about how much time you waste trying to find that one message? According to the Harvard Business Review, full inboxes waste 27 minutes per day. You may be among those the article identifies as arguing against moving emails out of the inbox due to the ease of search functionality. Search is great, but HBR points out that if you are checking email 15 times per day, spending only 4 seconds looking at each, and re-reading only 10% of the messages, you will essentially be wasting 27 minutes every single day on email alone.
The HBR article goes on to argue against using folders and archiving emails, citing the time wasted on such activities, but this is where I have to DISAGREE. Below are my five tips for keeping your inbox clean and maximizing your time.
1. Create folders for emails you want (need) to keep
Don’t tell me you don’t know how to create a folder either. If you don’t know how to create a folder, GTS (Google That Shit) and you’ll find…
