Why bother with cleaning your inbox? Is cleaning it worth the effort? Yes, and more so than most people realize. See 8 compelling benefits of cleaning up email.
The average person receives about 120 emails every day. Globally, this easily adds up to over 300 billion emails sent and received every year. That can be a lot to manage whether you access messages via your mobile device or desktop.
If you miss checking your email for just one day there may be urgent messages that end up getting lost in your inbox. You also spend a lot of valuable time trying to catch up when you could be doing other things.
But having an email account doesn't have to be stressful. Cleaning up email messages is one way to make your inbox more manageable.
There are many tools available that can help you handle the messages you're bombarded with every day. Read on to find out why it's important to have a clean email inbox.
Tips on Better Managing Your Inbox
When it comes to email inboxes, many people would be happy if they could start all over. But given the chance, would you manage your inbox differently? Chances are you won't unless you adopt specific habits that ensure you keep your inbox clean.
Here are a few you can try:
- Go through your email subscriptions
- Unsubscribe from those you're no longer interested in or read
- If not, set a filter that directs these messages to a specific folder
- Do an email search for specific addresses and delete unwanted emails associated with those addresses
- Create folders for messages you access daily
This can take some time and can be a hassle to do manually. The great thing is, many companies can provide this service for you. This makes it easier to clean up your inbox right away.
Reasons for Cleaning up Email Now
Reading and responding to emails may be a major part of your job duties. Letting them get out of control, or missing an important message, can affect your ability to do your job well. There are also many other reasons it's important to clear email messages regularly:
1. Stay Focused
Often, a cluttered inbox can affect your state of mind. Disorder and confusion are never good starting points for any day. A disorganized inbox can set the tone for your day.
You can lose your focus, especially when you're overwhelmed and don't know where to start. Email cleanup is a productive way to start your day.
2. Find Things Easily
To organize is to arrange something systematically. In doing this, you know where everything is because you've made space or a place for everything.
Delete email messages you no longer need. Organize messages you have to follow up on or refer to into appropriately marked folders. This will help you find things quickly.
When you take this approach with your email inbox, you're able to respond to urgent messages. You can also create a schedule to action items based on their priority.
3. Save Time
Not only does an organized email help you to find messages easily, but it also saves you time. You won't find yourself taking hours to search for one email. Often you don't even know where to start because you may not remember the send date or the subject of the email.
Spending time doing this can affect your ability to do other things on your schedule. This can disrupt your entire day and may even cause you to miss deadlines.
4. Reduce Stress
An overloaded inbox is a reminder that you have a million things to do. Facing this can often be so overwhelming that it causes anxiety.
This not only physically slows you down. It can also be mentally debilitating. This affects your ability to do your work effectively.
Studies show that the higher your email overload, the higher your level of stress.
5. Increase Productivity
A full inbox can also cause you to work harder not smarter. That's because you end up reading the same email as much as 10 times before you respond.
Not in the habit of deleting or redirecting emails? Then you may end up leaving them in your inbox even after actioning them.
This clutters your inbox and at times may cause you to respond to the same email twice. That's time you could be doing other tasks. The solution is to have your inbox as empty as possible.
6. Have More Control
On reviewing your email inbox, you may realize that you receive quite a few messages after hours. This translates into a barrage of emails when you open your inbox every morning. You can control the number of work emails you receive after your workday is over.
If you check your emails, even when you're not at work, senders will think it's okay to send you emails any time of day. But you can set the tone with colleagues and customers. Have a dedicated time to respond to emails during work hours.
Senders will know that you'll respond at a particular time during the day. They'll be less likely to send their emails after hours.
You can even set up an auto-response that states this. It will help you have fewer emails and a more manageable inbox every morning.
7. Resist the Temptation to Use Your Inbox as a Checklist
With an organized inbox, you're less likely to use it as your to-do list. Your email should not dictate your day's schedule. Set a specific time to check emails and then complete other tasks throughout the day.
Do you have an email alert? Do you check your inbox every time you hear it? This increases the likelihood of you constantly checking your inbox.
Placing emails in folders lets you know that you've actioned all the emails you need to for the day. You can schedule additional email items for the following day.
8. Be More Decisive
It's always tempting to leave emails in your inbox. When your inbox is already full, you'll be more inclined to hold off on answering others and just add them to the lot. A clear inbox can motivate you to read, action then delete an email immediately.
This helps you make quick decisions and not procrastinate by keeping the email in your inbox.
Clean Inbox - Clearer Mind
Arguably, emails are a necessary evil. They keep you informed and help you to communicate with others. However, it can become a nightmare when there are too many emails to manage.
This defeats the purpose of emails. A full inbox affects your ability to read all your messages. You also forget to respond to emails that get lost in your inbox queue.
Cleaning up email messages ensures this doesn't become an issue. Mailstrom can help you do this. We help you reduce spam while protecting your privacy. Contact us to clean up your inbox now!