Have you ever been away from your email for a few
days only to find your inbox has mushroomed? Now you have a few hundred ads, newsletters, notes, etc., waiting for you.
It's enough to make you want to close up your email program and not
deal with it at all.
But clearing your inbox does not have to be that hard. While we all get email messages that do require our attention, many can be handled much more quickly. Not everything has to be read.
Begin by putting the current, unread emails at the top. Skim through and see what might be urgent. Deal with those.
Notes needing a response, but not urgent, get moved to a
virtual file labeled "To Answer." Set aside time later to respond to these.
Delete, without opening, anything that looks like spam or ads you do not care about.
You are likely left with ads from places where you shop and newsletters you generally like to read.
Do you have any plans to
shop? Is there anything you are looking for? If not, delete every one of those ads.
Now you are down to newsletters. Grab a cup of tea and read those you enjoy the most. Perhaps there are
one or two you never read; unsubscribe from those.
The bottom line is, you are not obligated to read every single email. It can be amazingly freeing to get rid of stuff and see an empty or
nearly empty email inbox.
