24 Seven March 2019

EMAIL
OVERLOAD
BY GAYLE M. GRUENBERG, CPO-CD ®
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gayle M. Gruenberg, CPO-CD ® , is the chief
executive organizer of Let’s Get Organized,
LLC, an award-winning professional
organizing firm based in New Jersey,
and the creator of the Make Space for
Blessings system.
TO LEARN MORE VISIT:
www.LGOrganized.com
Our society may have gone as “paperless” as
possible, but now we’re faced with having
to manage all things digital, especially that
dreaded communication mechanism: email.
Email definitely has its place in business and
personal communication; however, due to
its convenience, speed, and low cost, we are
amassing inundated inboxes.
The average office worker receives more than
120 email messages a day, nearly half of which
is spam. Spending 30 seconds on each message
adds up to one hour per day, or 240 hours a
year, just managing email! Here are a few ideas
for managing a massive myriad of messages.
Stop it before it arrives. Be judicious about
giving out your email address. Don’t sign up
for offers online. You never know where your
email address will be sold.
Unsubscribe from unwanted newsletters and
ads. Take 10 minutes once a week to go through
your inbox and stop the inflow of junk email. It
may take a few weeks for the flood to stop, and
some companies may not honor your request
the first time, so you may have to do another
round the following week.
Do triage. Create rules in your email program
to filter messages from particular senders into
specific folders. You can easily see if you have
a new email from that sender and act on it
quickly.
Schedule specific times to read and act on
email, such as at the very beginning and end of
the day. Close your email program during the
rest of the day to avoid being distracted by it.
Keep up with it every day and act on
important messages as soon as possible.
Allowing messages to accumulate is the
digital equivalent of allowing mail to pile up
on the kitchen table or too many possessions
to clutter a room. It can can hamper
productivity, create unnecessary obstacles,
and create a subtle energy drain.
At work, consider delegating the task of
managing email to an assistant, either
physically in your workplace or a virtual
assistant.
Organize your email the same way you would
any other file system. Use colors, labels, and
folders to sort and prioritize messages by
sender or topic. Create broad categories and
subcategories to immediately access needed
information.
Here is a radical idea. Create a current year
archive with two folders: Copy Inbox and
Copy Sent. Copy all current inbox messages
to its corresponding folder and all sent
message to its folder. Create rules to copy all
incoming messages to Copy Inbox and sent
messages to Copy Sent. Then delete from
your inbox all of the messages older than one
week, one month, whatever time frame you
choose.
Email is a useful way to communicate
without generating paper, but it creates a new
challenge: inbox clutter. As with anything, if
left to pile up, it becomes an overwhelming
task to address. Taking a few minutes each
day to create structure and maintain it can
promote productivity and alleviate stress.