Guest Author - Emily Wilska
E-mail is supposed to help make our lives easier, but between spam and the dozens--if not hundreds--of other messages we receive each week, it can quickly become a headache of its own. Here are some tips to help you organize your e-mail and tame the electronic beast.
Limit the flow
It sounds obvious, but it can be easy to forget that one of the simplest ways of keeping e-mail under control is limiting how much you receive (and send!). Think twice before signing up for things like e-mail newsletters, daily alerts, and newsgroups in which posts are sent via e-mail rather than to a central online bulletin board; join only those groups or mailing lists that you're truly interested in. When you do sign up for e-mail newsletters and groups, give them a trial run; if they're not useful to you after a few weeks, unsubscribe. Any reputable sender will remove your name from their list without hassle.
Also try to keep tabs on how many messages you forward or mass-mail to friends, co-workers, and family. Think twice before sending that cute e-mail message about friendship or that "good luck" chain mail to everyone in your address book. If you want to bid your friends good luck or share a poem about what your friends mean to you, try writing them personal messages instead.
Sort and purge
Though e-mail doesn't pile up on desktops or in filing drawers the same way paper does, it can still become unruly. That's one of the reasons e-mail folders can be so useful: they allow you to sort your messages by categories so they're easier to save and find again when you need them.
When creating e-mail folders, consider using names and categories that are similar to those you use for offline files. For example, if your paper files include categories like "Family," "Friends," "Investing," and "Home," try creating e-mail folders with those same categories. This can make it easier to decide where to store messages, and can help standardize your online and offline files.
Though most online e-mail programs now offer quite a bit of storage space, and you have almost unlimited space if you save your mail directly to your computer, try not to save messages without thinking. As with paper files, before you save something, ask yourself three questions: Do I really need this (or is it really special to me)? Is there a legal reason I need to keep this? Is this message the only place I can find this information? if you can't answer "yes" to at least one of those questions, consider sending the message to the trash can.
Resist the print urge
While some e-mail messages are worth printing, others will only add to the paper clutter you need to sort through, and may end up causing more of a headache than they're worth. Unless you use a mail program that offers very little storage space and you often receive important messages, chances are you definitely don't need to print every message you receive.
Try creating your own guidelines for what gets printed and what doesn't. For example, you might decide to print only messages with lots of sentimental value, articles or newsletters with information you want to keep and refer back to, and things you'll only use offline, such as recipes. Everything else can remain paper-free.
If you do opt to print out more of your e-mail, aim to get it into folders, binders, or some other storage space once it's on paper so you can avoid stacks of messages on your desk.
Try taking some time to create e-mail folders, do some electronic sorting and purging, and coming up with some ground rules on printing. With a bit of thinking and a small investment of effort, you may indeed find that e-mail is the useful and efficient tool it was meant to be.
