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Empty Your Inbox
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2 of 10 from 10 Ways to Unclutter Your Inbox and Regain Your Morning Sanity
Three simple words. Sounds easy, right? But how many messages are sitting in your email inbox right now? A few? Hundreds?? Thousands??? Repeat after me… "My inbox is not a permanent storage location for my email." You should use your inbox only as it was intended—as a temporary storage space for emails after they are delivered and before they are read.
For this to work, you will need to start with an empty inbox. If you have any messages in your inbox right now, create a subfolder named, "To Do." Next, drag and drop everything from your inbox folder into this new "to do" folder. Finally, schedule a block of time on your calendar to clear this folder. Use your best guess in regard to how long this might take, as you can always schedule more time later.
Now you have an empty inbox. You are checking your email at specified intervals (see number 1). If you must, you are checking messages as they arrive. To keep it clear, the concept is simple. Scan the emails in chronological order, implementing productivity expert Steve Allen's "2-Minute Rule." If you can take care of the item in two minutes or less, do so immediately. If the item requires more than two minutes, file it in an appropriate subfolder, and schedule a task on your calendar to complete later. Abracadabra. Your inbox is empty!
Remember that clearing your inbox does not mean performing all the required action items. It only requires that you read or scan each new message, delete it, print it, file it, delegate it, respond to it, or make an action item on your calendar.
Allowing messages to pile up in your inbox is a recipe for disaster. Besides feeling overwhelmed, you will start to overlook important emails. You will also waste time as you read and scan the messages repeatedly without attending to them in the appropriate manner. Commit today to keeping your inbox empty. Einstein did not say this, but he should have: A clear inbox is a clear mind.
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