Emails are a great form of communication as you can send a simple message or important documents through them. They are part of almost everyone's professional life. Although they rarely increase productivity. Instead, they are known to hamper it with constant notifications and pings. Thus, reaching Inbox Zero is a beneficial idea.
Inbox Zero – What exactly is it?
Merlin Mann invented the idea of Inbox Zero. She's a productivity expert and writer from San Francisco. The concept of inbox zero does not refer to the number of emails in your inbox; rather, it refers to the time and energy used when managing emails.
How to make your zero inbox using email management policies?
Merlin says, "Once you know where things are going, it becomes much easier to know where to put them. You should categorize your emails as it is a convenient email management solution. This makes your email management process easier as you will be able to easily find your important folders.
There are many ways to manage emails. Keep reading to find out.
Gmail has various filters that allow you to classify your emails based on sender, size, and subject. You can even take advantage of this filter and archive emails that are not important to you, but you don't want to delete them as well.
It's very easy to zero out your inbox because Gmail will know where to send your emails in the future. It has built categories like Primary, Social and Promotions.
Adding a star to your favorite email helps you rank important emails. It is one of the best email management tools that will help you prioritize for later. It's important to remember that featured emails won't make them go away. So, you might also want to archive some of your favorite emails.
Merlin thinks that many people regularly check their emails but rarely do anything about them. Most of us delay the email management system thinking that we will deal with it later. However, it's important to understand that pushing this task every time won't zero out your inbox. In fact, you can view a particular email and archive it only then. It will save you time and soon your inbox will be zero. You can sort out your email management system in just three steps:
If a certain mail is not relevant to you, forward it at this time only for better email management. This will also help distribute tasks within the team. However, register after delegating the mail.
A pile of emails can take a long time to sort through. Also, just sorting them out after you've done your immediate tasks can seem very daunting. Therefore, in such a scenario, you can invest in a good email management software.
You may receive many emails that require a thoughtful response and therefore cannot be dealt with immediately. Thus, you should set a time limit of one day to respond to these emails so that you don't accumulate a lot of them. This will ensure that no email stays in your inbox for longer than a day.
Once an email has resolved its purpose, learn how to delete it. You can certainly archive it if you want to keep it. However, your company may have a good email management system that will implement archiving.
Business emails are meant to be concise and crisp. So, while typing an email, you can take the help of email management software that can help you type short and precise emails. If you want to improve your email management, treat email like any other email service and make it more professional.
Just think of your email as a form of text and think about how you might compose it. Just the necessary jokes and a specific message. This email management solution will save you time and help you get more done. However, don't shorten sentences that are really important.
Every professional has a standard set of emails. You might write them repeatedly for work or personal business. It can be a document or a general presentation of yourself. Either way, you are testing yourself by wasting your time on repeated activities when it can be supported by an email management solution.
Instead, use an email software service that can help you create templates. Thus, you will only have to send your template in response to certain standard emails.
Emails usually hamper your productivity due to the notification sound. However, it was introduced to notify you about important emails, but it does the opposite. Thus, a good software to manage emails will help you to reduce these notifications.
One way to do this is to turn off the notification sound, but again, that won't be the ideal solution. Numerous studies show that switching from one task to another can reduce your efficiency by 40%. Opening an email is definitely one of them.
The only way to improve is to implement an email management schedule. Set a time to respond to your emails. Don't keep checking your inbox at random times. Some email management software can also remind you of your schedule.
This way you can completely disable your email notifications. However, if you have certain emails that need immediate attention, customize your email management software settings and you'll be good to go.
Your inbox is your best bet. You can play around with the concepts we just discussed. If the inbox does not help you, you can search for Gmail add-ons. However, this will only work if you are using Gmail. You can explore various productivity features and get your inbox to zero in no time.
There are many email management software like Mailman it can help you reduce your inbox to zero while increasing your productivity.
Use email to your advantage and increase your productivity with email management strategies and software.
