Before I started working at a digital company, my inbox was just filled with H&M, Forever 21, and Sephora e-mailers. But that quickly changed for me. Within a week of joining my new job, I had 300 unread emails, and a major case of the blues! That Inbox (0) seemed unattainable till I discovered a few handy hacks to declutter my email inbox.
If your fast-filling inbox is driving you crazy too, check out these five simple ways to declutter your inbox today.
1. Use filters
Email providers have customisable filters that can help you filter out the email which will be more important at a certain hour of the day. For instance, it is a must for me to read all emails from my boss and Editor every morning, even before I check out the sale at Sephora or coupon code from Forever 21. Filters allow you to label emails based on sender, subject line, words included, or even presence of an attachment.
2. Unsubscribe
… from 90 percent of the lists you’re on. If you find yourself deleting half the emails you get from random lists that you have subscribed to, then it is time to unsubscribe from all of them. You don’t need us to tell you how they unnecessarily clog your inbox, waste your time in deleting each of them, and make it hard for you to actually get to the emails that actually matter.
3. Disable notifications
As if we aren’t checking our phones all day long! You’re obviously going to see notifications from the social media apps you use, why do you need them on email too? Disabling social media email notifications means you avoid a barrage of unnecessary emails that are only going to land up in Trash anyway.
4. Create folders
Segregate your emails based on the following: ASAP! (reply as soon as possible), EOD (reply by the end of the day), Keep (keep it forever), and Delete (yeah!). This will make the entire process of decluttering super easy, and you make you a lot more productive too!
5. Be regular
Last but not the least, don’t skip a day of checking your emails. Make sure you don’t take a week off of your email, because you will definitely be greeted by a pool of several hundred emails.