Email a Time Drain?

Does opening your email turn into a time drain? With so much of our communication revolving around email, it is easy to watch your time go down the drain as you work in your inbox. I completely understand as I too get into that situation.  I open my inbox and next thing I know I have lost two hours with little to nothing to show for my time.

Do you receive a large amount of promotional emails? Do you still want to receive these emails? Is the offerings from the company no longer valid to you? I understand as my children grow so do their interests.

Here are a few simple things that I have put in place, they may work for you too.

Unroll.me

Unroll.me is a service that lets you unsubscribe in on click to various emails! It also gives an option to have those emails rolled up into one email and sent in a group message for easy skimming in a central location.

Watch here for an explanation.

Cleaning and Organizing your Inbox

This one is a bit more time-consuming and overwhelming if not done correctly. Do you have folder and categories set up in your email? If not, you may want to consider creating folders for the items that you may need again.

Are you combining to fewer inboxes? Over time I have gathered four different email addresses. I have all of these combined into one email client. Giving me only one inbox to go through.

Instead of having my email open all day, I spend time morning, midday and evening going over email. Still, I will have days that I spend too much time with email. It just happens.

Dave Crenshaw is a great resource for email management ideas. He is an author, speaker and business coach. If you have a Lynda.com membership, he has a number of training courses that are worth watching. If you don't have a Lynda.com account no worries, he has a great blog too! Here is one on How to Detox your Overstuffed Email Inbox.

You can, and should, bring your email inbox to zero at least once per week. @DaveCrenshaw

I am working to bring my email inbox to zero as Dave encourages once per week. It may be only for a split second, but that split second feels wonderful! I wish for you to also feel this split second of joy. I hope these suggestions help with the email time drain. Good luck.