Emails fill our inbox to the brim every day!

In a report from The Radicati Group, the number of emails sent and received in 2015 was 122 emails per person per day.  And it was estimated to steadily increase year over year.

Just yesterday I received about 60 emails and 40 of those were subscriptions I had signed up for. What the what?? Do I really have time to read all of those emails? Definitely not! Do I really WANT to read all of them? Maybe. But more than likely, probably not.

So what do I do instead of reading every single email?  I either just delete the emails without even opening, which wastes time and energy, or I leave the emails in my inbox. This is almost worse because the unwanted emails crowd out the emails I actually want to read.  Like the one from my mom asking about visiting this weekend, or a bill I need to pay or an email from my kids’ daycare telling me about the activities for next week.

This adds unneeded stress to my already stressful day!

Not all email is bad.  But I need to get to a point where the emails in my inbox are not adding stress to my day.  I want my inbox to contain emails that bring me joy.  Or at least be something that really needs me to take an action…like a bill. 🙂

Here are a few things that I am working on to simplify my email inbox.

Separate the noise

When I open my email inbox I want to see emails that will either bring me joy or are something that I need to take action on, like a bill or event to sign up for.  I do not want to be bombarded with social media updates, newsletters I signed up for or blog posts.  Separating out the noise was the first step I took to really narrow down the number of emails I see in my inbox.  Here are a few ways to separate the noise:

• Use a service like unroll.me

  I signed up for this service and it could not have been easier.  And bonus, it’s free! Basically, the site will connect to your email account and anytime you receive an email in your inbox that it thinks is a newsletter, it will ask if you want to roll it up, keep in the inbox, or unsubscribe.  The emails that you roll up will be delivered to you once a day in one neat email digest.

  You can then choose to scan the list and read the emails you want to read.  One note about unsubscribing through the site – it doesn’t actually unsubscribe you from the sender’s email subscriber service.   unroll.me actually just sends the email to your trash.  So to keep things clean I like to actually take the time to unsubscribe through the link in the newsletter rather than through unroll.me.

• Setup Filters

  If you receive emails that you can batch process or emails that you want to keep but don’t necessarily need to see in the inbox, a filter may be helpful.  That way you can decide when to check those folders and process on your own time.

• Automatically block or delete emails with “newsletter” or some other term in the subject

  If you are really serious about not seeing any newsletters in your inbox this could be a handy trick.  The thing I don’t like about this is that you are still subscribed to the newsletter, it’s just going straight to your trash.  You could also miss emails that you actually do need to see.  So again, I am taking the time to click the unsubscribe button on emails I no longer wish to receive.

• Use an app like Feedly to follow blogs rather than subscribe via email

  I personally use Feedly and I think it’s a great tool to consume and share information on your own terms.

I don’t think bloggers take it personally if you unsubscribe from their email list.  They get that we are bombarded and there are other ways to consume the information besides another email.

Unsubscribe!

This goes hand in hand with the first tip, filtering out the noise.  But I wanted to mention it specifically because I think it’s so important.  In that same Radicati Group report, it was esimated that 13% of the emails received were either spam or considered “graymail” (newsletters that people signed up for but do not want anymore).  So for all the graymail you receive, simply click “unsubscribe” and you won’t waste any more time or energy deleting it every time you receive it.

Some questions I ask myself as I unsubscribe:

• Do most emails from this person or company have a shelf life?
• Does this kind of info help you achieve a task?
• Do the emails cause stress just by reading? i.e. do they make me feel like I need to do more activities with my kiddos or cook better healthier meals?

Answering these questions make it easier to unsubscribe and not be afraid of missing out on the content.  If I do end up wanting to receive the info again in the future I can always resubscribe!

A couple areas to remember when you are unsubscribing:

• Store Promotional Emails

  I have found that you can almost always get a coupon code online when you are out shopping.  I also found that these promotional emails would get me to buy stuff that I didn’t really want in the first place, but because it was “on sale” or a “good deal” I felt like I needed to purchase the item.

• Social Media Updates

  If you want to engage in social media it helps to set aside a set time to do that and go into the website on your own time.  Don’t let social media dictate when you go to the site by sending you notifications.

I am really working on is not being quick to subscribe to something unless I think it will truly add joy to my life.  I am guilty of the shiny opt-in syndrome!

Schedule email time

This is something that I am not good at but I do see the benefits when I actually follow through with checking email at a set time, rather than constantly checking throughout the day.  Here are a few other tips for processing your email during your scheduled time slot:

• Implement the Pomodoro Technique to focus for a set period of time.
• Use the 2 minute rule – if you can respond now, do it!
• Utilize the snooze feature in the Inbox app by Gmail – it will resend you the email at a specified day or time when you have more time to respond.  In Claire Díaz-Ortiz’s 5 day email challenge she recommends having one day a week where you do a deep dive of your email and knock out the emails that take a bit more time to respond.  You could use the rebound feature to resend the emails during your deep dive.
• Go one step further and do a challenge like Leo Babatua where he encourages you to only check email 1-2 times per day and only for 20 minutes each time.

Scheduling your email time really makes you focus on answering your emails and only have the essential emails come to your inbox in the first place.

>> Related post: Makeover Your Mornings Series

Organize my email box

There are a couple other things I do from an organizational perspective that I think help to simplify my email inbox.

• Setup Tags or folders to get the email out of my inbox once I have processed it.
• Don’t use my inbox as a to do list.

>> For more tips on organizing Gmail check out this post from Richly Rooted.

Need more help simplifying your inbox?  These posts were helpful for me on my journey!

A Mindful Guide to Email in 20 Minutes a Day @ Zen Habits
Is Your Email Inbox Out of Control? A Free Five-Day Challenge! @ Claire Diaz-Ortiz
Mindful Technology: Simplify Email and Reduce Inbox Stress @ tiny buddha
How to Simplify Email Management With 5 Simple Rules @ Cory Cook

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8 Steps to Clear the Clutter (plus FREE checklist!)

Baby Steps for a Simper Life – great place to start the journey towards a simpler life.

What about you?

What do you do to simplify your email inbox? Do you have any other tools or systems you have put in place?