A Blog Written By Joe Apfelbaum

Photo courtesy of: yourcoach.be

Last week, I had 9,476 emails cozily resting in my Gmail account. It was awful. I felt overwhelmed, disgruntled, and generally unproductive. Every day, I came into work planning to go through my emails. And, as I’d sit down and get started on the task, confident in my email-sorting abilities,  I’d get another 56 emails. Without fail. Every single hour.

I know I’m not alone. According to the Information Overload Research Group, the average executive receives over 300 messages per day. Typically, employees spend about 20 hours per week managing email, two hours of which, the group reports, is unnecessary email.

That’s when I knew I needed to do something different…and fast. I did some research, and found an email-organization approach that really has been working for me. I recommend this technique to anyone who has ever felt the anxiety-ridden stress generally associated with email overload. Here are the tips I learned:

1) Every single time you log in to your email account, empty it. Make this a priority. Think about it: Every day, you get mail delivered to your home (the Post Office hasn’t defaulted just yet) and sift through that. Your rip up irrelevant credit card offers, consider charity donations for the Red Cross, and RSVP to your niece’s Bat Mitzvah. You should follow a similar strategy with your emails. All it takes is some organization.

2) According to this article, there are only three kinds of email messages. They are: The things you need to do, the things you’re waiting on, and the things you might want to refer to later. Likewise, you should have three folders set up in your email: To-do, Wait, and Reference. First, you need to make these three labels. Then, daily, when you go through your messages, separate every single email you get into those folders. You don’t actually need to handle the content of the emails. This step is simply about getting organized.

3) Once you have sufficiently sorted through your thousands of emails, you will literally feel as though a giant weight has been lifted off your shoulders. I know I did. Then, start going through the categories. Things in the the “To Do” label, say, a project for your company, go first. Aspire to tackle about five of these a day. Next, waddle over to the “Wait” list. Tackle one or two a day. And all the while, when a new message comes in, make sure to sort it into a category.

4) Once you’ve begun to get these things tasks completed, I also recommend creating a “DONE” folder. When you’ve completely finished with the task in an email, and have no more work associated with it, put it in this compartment. It will feel  great to watch the “DONE” label expand with completed chores. I feel better every time I look at it.

And there you have it. Hopefully this technique helps you like it did me. Email overload is annoying, but not impossible to maintain. Get started with it today, and let me know if it this strategy works for you.