Sarah Lindner

Get Your E-Mail Under Control

Isn’t e-mail supposed to make work easier? And time spent in Jakarta’s jams more productive, assuming you’ve got a smartphone with an integrated e-mail program?

That’s the idea, of course, but the reality is that e-mail often disrupts our day or even consumes great swaths of it. We try to sift through the notifications of prizes we’ve won for contests we did not enter and the e-mails offering high-end electronic goods at unbelievable prices, to separate out the personal messages from the all-important office memos, but we may never feel like it’s under our control.

If we can’t do anything about making your cross-town journey swifter, at least we can help you manage another sort of traffic. Here is some advice from experts on trimming down your inbox and managing your everyday e-mail flow.

Maura Thomas is a productivity trainer and owner of RegainYourTime.com. Lorie Marrero is creator of ClutterDiet.com and author of “The Clutter Diet: The Skinny on Organizing Your Home and Taking Control of Your Life.”

Does the idea of diving into your overflowing e-mail box seem just too overwhelming?

Thomas and Marrero both recommend clearing e-mails out to their own folder temporarily to make the task less daunting and to make managing your inbox easier until you’re fully organized.

When you’re ready to start organizing, you have three choices with each message: trash it, file it or take action on it.

Use your e-mail program’s “sort” function to help you quickly identify e-mails that can be trashed, Marrero says. Sorting by subject, for example, can help you see which e-mails are part of one thread.

Some e-mails you’ll be able to reply to quickly. For others that require more action, decide how you will get them onto your to-do list. “You don’t want to have two places [your list and your inbox] to look for your things to do,” Thomas says. Some mail programs or add-ons (such as MailTags, which Thomas recommends for Mac users) allow you to turn an e-mail item into a calendar appointment or to-do list task.

You’ll want to keep some e-mails for reference. Put them in their own folder or folders, Marrero and Thomas say. With e-mail programs having powerful search functions, you probably won’t need a very elaborate folder system.

Ask yourself two questions when deciding whether to keep an e-mail, Thomas says. What’s the worst that could happen if you needed it and didn’t have it? And could you get the information elsewhere?

Follow the same process you used for cleaning out your e-mail to manage it daily: Send quick replies when you can, add e-mails that require more action to your to-do list, delete the rest.

But do it on your own timetable, not when an incoming e-mail notification demands your attention, Thomas says.

A lot of us, whether we realize it or not, have our e-mail programs set to notify us whenever e-mails come in, or at very frequent intervals.

“If your technology is controlling you, that’s your first problem,” Thomas says. When you stop what you’re doing every time an e-mail comes in, you’re working less effectively, she says. “Trying to stay on top of them as they come in is probably not going to get you very far.”

How often should you check e-mail? “For most industries, I tell people twice a day,” Thomas says.

That won’t work in every field or in every office, of course, but even if you’re checking e-mail four or six times a day, that’s still a big improvement over heading to your inbox every time your e-mail notification chimes.

And when you do check e-mail, avoid just skimming for the most important messages and putting off the rest, Thomas says. Take the time to process e-mail right then. Most e-mails can be handled faster than you think, she adds.

Of course, you’ll have fewer e-mails to manage if you can stop them from getting to you in the first place.

Unsubscribe from the newsletters, sales alerts and other e-mails you’re not using, Marrero says. And think hard before adding new subscriptions. This can be a big step if you’re an information addict who’s worried about missing out on something, she says.

“We have to remember that all of that is out there when we need it,” Marrero says. “It doesn’t have to come to us.”

A good alternative to having information come to your inbox is subscribing to your favorite information sources on an RSS reader instead, Thomas says. The information is compiled for you, and you can read it on your own timetable.

You can also team up with your colleagues to scale back e-mail use in your workplace. Discuss what e-mails all of you do and don’t want to be copied on, Marrero says. “Also have a conversation about what you want to e-mail about and what you want to call about,” she adds.

Another way to defend your inbox is to make full use of your e-mail program’s filtering features. For example, maybe you like your professional group’s newsletter, but you don’t like that it pops up in your inbox three times a day. Find out how to use your e-mail program to automatically route the newsletter to a folder you’ve set up for it, Marrero says.

Thomas recommends the service Otherinbox.com to help wrangle “robot’’ e-mails, like those order confirmations when you shop online. Otherinbox keeps them out of your regular inbox (and keeps them from distracting you when they come in). The site sends you a summary of all the e-mails daily so you can manage them when you’re ready.

So does taking all of these steps mean that you’ll keep your inbox perpetually emptied and pristine? Maybe, but don’t worry if it doesn’t.

“It’s just not suited to everybody’s style,” Marrero says. “I always tell people that if you can get it down to 20, that’s great. That’s extremely manageable.”

Cox Newspapers

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