Here are four useful tips on how you should organize your email to save time....

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We check on our emails constantly. It’s just unavoidable. But it
also takes a lot of time, sometimes without even realizing,
since it’s such a regular part of our daily routine. That time is
valuable – it could be spend working, relaxing or enjoying
your time with your close ones. Or virtually anything else
other than scanning walls of text, which are very likely going
to be deleted.
But there are ways to filter your mails and to save a good chunk
of the time you spend on them. Here’s four of them:

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First of all, get rid of all those subscriptions that you never really read. At the
time, it might have seemed like a good idea to subscribe for daily or
weekly updates from a news-site or business. But a month passes, maybe
even more, and you still haven’t read a single email from the dozens you
received. Those messages become a part of your inbox – a part you don’t
want.
Unsubscribe from them! You might think you don’t read these mails, but you
probably still scan them. And if they don’t really interest you, that’s a
time sink. Firstly, that happens once a week or even more often.
Secondly, you’ll be getting emails from at least six different senders.
That’s maybe 30 minutes – can you not think of anything you would
rather do than read mails you know are landing in the deleted folder
without any use?
1. Unsubscribe from mailing lists you don’t
read

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You should also definitely start filtering. I personally have four different emails.
The first one is for work-related email only. This is the one I look at every day.
The second one is exclusively for a side-project I’m working on, but requires
little attention most of the year. All my information and contacts I have for that
specific project are there and nowhere else – I mostly use it when I know that
something is currently happening and communication is required.
My third one is, simply put, for emails from my mom. Not only her, but mostly her.
Oh, you saw an interesting job offer, mom? Or my sister sent me a funny
picture? That’s cool, but it’s not something I need in my daily working routine.
Fourth, but definitely not last, is my spam email. For those times when I just
need to make an account for a site I’m probably only using once. I look at that
one only when I forget a password somewhere.
That’s a system that works from me – maybe 80% of email comes from the last
three. But the 20% from my first email are the essential ones that I need daily.
2. Have at least 3 different mails: work, personal, spam

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You can take this filtering even further. If you’re a freelancer and
have lots of clients or projects running simultaneously, you
know that your inbox is often a chaotic mess. Create folders
for clients and employ filters. Every mail that ends with, say,
@dell.com, if Dell is your client, go into the dell folder. And so
on. That way, all your communication with that client is in
one place and easily searchable.
3. Use folders for different clients

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Finally, here’s an email strategy I see some of my clients use and envy, but
am still working on. Don’t beat around the bush. Especially for long-term
communication, just synthesize emails to their core message. What do
you really want to say? “Here’s an update on how the project is coming
along, what do you think? See attachment.” No need to write 15
sentences around that.
This strategy saves you time in two ways – you write less and the recipient is
prompted to do the same. They’ll probably respond in a similar brief
manner, saving you both time on writing and reading. Also don’t miss our
tips for writing emails which won’t be ignored.

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