Friday, February 08, 2008

An empty inbox is like an uncluttered home


This is a picture of what my inbox usually looks like. Because I'm being completely open and honest with your, right at the moment, I have 6 in my inbox.
It makes me smile ;) to see that lovely uncluttered space.
There are probably about 5 - 7 habits I have that helps to keep my inbox empty.
I'll share one of the ways with you:
Every day I play a game with myself to see how many emails I can delete.
When you turn things into a game, it becomes fun and not a chore.
My aim is to delete 50 items daily. If I don't have that many after clearing my inbox, I go to my Sent Items to clear out!
Once you get used to seeing that uncluttered goodness, it's hard to go back to a full inbox. I know I can't. I almost start twitching when I see about 20 :)
So for the next week, let's have some FUN and see how many emails you can delete daily.
What are your inbox tips?

3 comments:

Veggiemomof2 said...

I use hotmail & I've made the inbox my homepage. It makes is quicker to open & I'm forced to see "pending" stuff every time I open a window. I also set my filter to "exclusive" so I know if it's inbox, it's not spam.

Anonymous said...

So, looking for email tips?

Most people don't realize that they can create folders to save those emails. It's kind of like a filing system for email messages. I actually have a folder of email templates... common emails (mostly for business related stuff) that I send. It basically has the email all typed up and I just cut and paste the body into a new email message... MAJOR TIME SAVER!

Want more, I got a million of them! I am like you Marcia... I love the look of a clean inbox!

Steven Hanks (IWMSnews.com) said...

Hi Marcia,

I've optimized my decluttering procedures by a combination of different techniques. First of all I've used the timing mechanism described by Mark Forster. Twice a day and all at once. But what works best for me is combination between current projects and archives. My Current Projects (or current initiative as Mark would refer to) cause a lot of e-mail traffic. Once in my inbox at the next batch moment I'll immediately place it in the folder and tag it. The next batch I handle all tagged e-mails. So within two batches I'd able to clear most of my inbox.

Yours Sincerely,

Steven Hanks

ShareThis