Last week was about getting back on track after being sick for two weeks. Lots of delayed to-do’s that needed to get done. When I was sick, I got off track with my time diary because there were days when I didn’t really do anything – including writing in the diary! So last week I started it again. One thing I am finding is that I spend a lot of time each day clearing email. Not the most productive thing I do, but if I don’t get it cleared out, it becomes overwhelming very quickly. I am sure that there are better ways to do this. I just haven’t discovered them yet! So I went online to see if there was anything I was missing.

I found recommendations to organize email into folders, filter junk e-mail, maintain separate personal and business e-mail accounts, only check email two or three times a day, address each e-mail quickly, keep responses short and sweet, be clear, be polite, etc. All things that I am doing currently so not much help there. So I kept on reading and found two more suggestions that I have not been following. The first one is to delete aggressively. I don’t do that. I keep a lot of e-mails for reference purposes – e-mails from clients, e-mails that support tax deductions (online order confirmations), e-mails with great content that I want to keep (and I don’t want to print out and file in hard copy), so my inbox gets overloaded and so do my folders. I need to start deleting aggressively!

The second suggestion I have not been following is to stop using my inbox as a to-do list. I am very guilty of having e-mail to-do’s. And I agree that it is not an efficient system because I put them in a follow-up folder and then don’t follow up, or I leave them in my inbox but they get buried. So I spend to much time going back over old emails to make sure I am finding everything I need to deal with – not a very good use of my time. So I also need to stop using my inbox as my to-do list!

Is e-mail taking up too much of your time? Are you following all these suggestions for taming this electronic beast? Do you have some other ways of making it work for you? Please share! I’m always looking for great ideas! In the meantime, I’m off to aggressively delete some untamed e-mails! Enjoy!