3 Tips to eliminate email stress and take control of your inbox

Michele Duwe from Miss Task Eliminate Email Stress

Does opening your inbox make you cringe? Anxiety fills your chest whenever you think about opening your email. How long does it take to draft a reply to a negative email? Your inbox should not have that much control over your emotions. Here are three tips to eliminate email stress and transform your inbox from something you dread.

Take back control of your inbox.

How would you feel if you could regain control of your inbox and stop feeling stressed every time you opened it?

As an online business owner, do you let your inbox dictate your day, or is it only a tool you use?

I’m guessing you know what I think is the right answer. Your inbox is only a tool that you use in your online business. This is important because it is not your “to-do list.”

Use the most straightforward approach to create your unique best practice to keep your inbox in check.

The keys to going from an inbox that is cringing worthy to one that feels organized and manageable.

I’ve cleaned up a lot of inboxes for the online business owners that I support. So often, they are so scared to delete anything from their inboxes. Some have never deleted a single message. You may think that looking at an unread message count of tens of thousands of messages is not a big deal, but it is.

This leads to email stress.

You see, opening up an inbox full of emails you don’t need will cause you stress. Whether you choose to believe it or not. Why is letting go of junk and outdated email such a struggle?

I’m curious what are your thoughts about having an inbox full of emails? Does that big number lead you to feel important or needed? Do you feel popular?

Drill down into you why you continue to have so many messages in your inbox.

I promise it’s not because of time. I’ve cleaned out inboxes that are over tens of thousands of emails in a couple of days or less. That’s with breaks and includes ensuring I wasn’t deleting anything worthy of a save.

As with everything in life, it comes back to our mindset and thoughts.

It’s time to take back control of your inbox once and for all.

Tip One to eliminate email stress, set up folders and labels.

The first thing to do in order to regain control over your inbox is this.

Setting up folders and labels to organize all the messages that must be kept.

Here is the list of folders that I create:

0-Immediate
1-Action
2-Active
3-Hold
Finance
Finance/Payable
Finance/Receivable
Review
Unsubscribe

Here are a few more ideas from folders that I have in my inbox as well:

⌚️ Waiting Room – this is instead of Hold; cause let’s be honest, I like cute names.

📖 Read At Leisure – a folder for all those marketing emails you’d like to read and don’t have time for right now.

If you’re a Gmail user, I suggest archiving the emails you think you may “need” in the future.

If you’d prefer setting up a folder is an option as well. Call it Old Emails, Dreaded Emails, Someday Maybe, if you like cute names too, have fun with it.

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Tip Two to take back control of your inbox, set up rules:

In the inbox, rules can be established to sort your emails automatically, so you don't have to. Setting up rules in Gmail and Spark, the email app I use on my phone and computer is so easy.

Don’t worry, Outlook user; I double-checked, and rules are also possible in Microsoft Outlook.

Filtering your emails can be done by using from, to, and specific words.

I’m going to give you my example of Austin, and this is what I mean by that. I don't know what happened,but some how my email address has gotten added to an email list for Austin that is looking for colleges.

I get multiple emails a day sent to Austin asking him to look at this university, this college or check out this campus or whatever.

It all has to do with Austin and with college.

Therefore, those are words that I look for in my filtering. So that I can get them out of my inbox and I don't have to deal with them because it's a pet peeve of mine that I have these in my email.

Although I tried unsubscribing in the beginning, it took too long because there were too many emails in my inbox.

Now I just have a rule that deletes Austin's email automatically.

What can you do with filters?

Do you want a message from your boss starred and marked important?

Do you want to send a templated email back if a message has specific words or goes to a certain inbox?

Filter all those marketing messages directly into your Read At Leisure folder. No more sorting or distracting you. Mark them as read for even less distraction.

Tip Three to eliminate email stress, use a timer:

Use a timer when going through your inbox.

Make sure you tell your brain that it will be easy to get through sorting your messages in that amount of time.

Since this is new to you, I suggest one 25-minute sprint or Pomodoro when sorting through your emails.

When you’re sorting, you’re not responding.
Instead, you’re making decisions as to when you will do the work.

Remember your email is Other People’s Agendas (I heard this from Ashlyn at Ashlyn Writes).

Begin to ask people to provide you with timeframes. Do this same curiosity to others.

Spell it out in the subject line exactly. Response Needed By [Date].

What is the goal when you’re sorting your messages?

It’s all about the 4 D’s: Do, Delegate, Defer, Delete.

Do –
How long will it take you? Are you able to respond back in a minute or less? If that is the case, do it right now and get it out of your email.
If it takes longer, answer the next question; when will it get done?

Decide when you will Do the task and put it on your calendar.

A quick reply to the sender to let them know it’s been received and you’ll have it to them by the end of the day on [insert the date].

Here’s an example:

Greetings!

Thank you for your email message. It’s been received, I have this on my to-do list and you’ll have it by the end of the day on Monday, November 7th. If you need this done sooner, please let me know.

Delegate –
Who else can do this for me? Are you able to delegate it in a minute or less? Do that now; if not decide when you’ll gather all the information to delegate it.

Defer –
The messages that are informational emails. These emails can be achieved for later review.

They will fall into the defer bucket and should be handled on the spot by either achieving or moving into your read-at-leisure folder.

Delete –
Listen to me just delete the junk!

I promise you do not need it in your life or your inbox. If they are marketing messages that are no longer valuable, drop them in the unsubscribe folder.

If you’re like me and not much of a tv watcher, sometimes it's nice to have a mindless activity while sitting on the sofa. Unsubscribing to emails is just that activity.

If you prefer a tool like Unroll.me to roll up those marketing emails and unsubscribe easily.