
BEST WAY TO MANAGE EMAIL OVERLOAD HOW TO
Here’s a walk-through on how to create folders in Gmail. You can also use labels as part of your automatic filters, which we’ll get into later in this section. At any time, you can view a label to review all emails within that category, or search based on labeling parameters. In any case, you can assign labels to individual messages (as many as you like) to “tag” them, making them much easier to organize in the future. You can create as many labels as you’ll ever need, creating a system of categories at your own discretion for example, you might create labels based on the nature of each project, or each individual client, or you might create labels based on your personal priorities. Labels, also sometimes referred to as folders, are Gmail’s primary organizational system, and they’re arguably superior to Outlook’s folders. Once your emails are better organized, they’ll seem far less overwhelming-even if you’re still getting a lot of them in quick succession. Most email overload problems can be mitigated, if not outright eliminated, with a solid, consistent organizational system. Use the metrics you found in your EmailAnalytics analysis to prove your point, and offer a solution-such as hiring a new person or spreading the work between multiple departments. Meet with them in person, if possible, or at least arrange a video call (here’s how to do a Gmail video call), and explain to them that your email volume is too much to manage singlehandedly. If you’re getting too much work from the top down and you don’t have the power to delegate, your only option may be having a frank conversation with a boss or supervisor. If there isn’t anyone else, consider hiring a personal assistant, or talking with your team to see who else might be available. If you’re overloaded with tasks and you simply don’t have time to address them all yourself, consider forwarding those tasks to someone else. One of the most important responsibilities you have is knowing when it’s appropriate to delegate work. Have a polite, direct conversation with this person, and ask them to send you fewer, more concise messages. It might be because they split one core message across multiple emails, or because they’re needy or impatient either way, you can mitigate this issue. With EmailAnalytics, you can identify people in your contact network who simply send you too many emails. This is also one of the best pieces of advice for how to focus at work. You’ll also want to check things like social media apps and project management platforms, and turn off email notifications where appropriate-it can greatly reduce your stream of incoming messages. If you do, you’ll notice the bombardment of new emails to be far less unsettling. Getting notifications from your inbox, either in the form of a phone vibration or sound alert, can be distracting, so consider turning these off altogether. Next, take a look at your notification settings-both for your inbox and your other management platforms. How many emails per day do you get from stores and services you haven’t used in years? If you’re like most of us, you procrastinate unsubscribing, or stay subscribed because you might need emails like this someday in the future.īut the reality is, most of these emails are wholly unnecessary, and will only serve to stress you out every time you get a notification that one has come in.ĭo yourself a favor and use an email cleaner app to clear out these unnecessary and problematic incoming emails. Let’s start with specific tactics you can use to decrease the number of emails you receive, or decrease your email workload.
