Organising your emails increases productivity and improves time management. In the last two days I have spoke to two people with email fatigue! One of whom had just returned from their two week holiday and it’s taken them 2 days just to shift through the mountain of emails they received, and the other had over 1500 unread emails in his inbox!

There is a better way!

Most Virtual assistants offer an email filtering service, where, for a relatively small fee, they have access to your emails and they sort and organise them for you, keeping you up to date with any urgent messages, responding to requests for standard information on your behalf, and deleting any unnecessary spam. You even get a summary at the end of the day of what you’ve had in, and what action has been taken. Imagine freeing up the time you spend on emails to be able to get on with your real work!

Of course, If you really can’t bear to hand over control of your emails, then you can organise emails yourself easily by utilising the functions your email client (such as outlook) provides. Here are some tips to help you get started:

• Be strict when responding to emails. There isn’t a need to answer each email as it comes in. If you want an instant answer, pick up the telephone. You won’t get much more instant than that!
• By setting rules for each newsletter you’ve subscribed to so that it goes into its own folder means they’re not clogging up your inbox and you can read them at your leisure.
• Set aside a couple of hours each day to go through your emails, say 1 hour at 11:00am & 1 hour at 4:00pm. If you are really concerned about delaying responses to people, put an auto responder on your email informing people you will respond within a set time.
• When you do check your emails, be strict! Look at every email with RAD in mind – Read, Action, Delete. If you don’t need to keep it, then delete it straight away. If you have to take action, consider whether it is going to be a quick action (in which case action immediately), or whether you need to schedule it into your diary

So now the big question is: once you’ve organised your emails, what will you do with all that spare time?