I used to drown in a sea of emails. Literally. Sometimes I missed out on important emails from friends and work, or in other, they just never showed up in my primary inbox. They weren’t missing, simply misplaced or buried deep beneath the other spam messages and unimportant newsletters taking over my email.
It was a mess.
I tried keeping my email and other folders as organised as I could because I received tons of emails and newsletters on a daily basis. At one point, a friend of mine saw the 900+ unread messages clogging my inbox and pointed out how I needed to do something about it fast. When I left it too long without trying to clean up a few emails, the new incoming ones overwhelmed my inbox. And it turns out that what I used to experience not too long ago is also shared by many others.
In today’s post, I want to share some tips that can help you to clear out your inbox of junk for good.
6 Tips to Spring Cleaning Your Email Inbox
1. Cut the Habit of Signing up for MORE Emails
One of the first few things that you have to do (which you will thank yourself later) is to stop subscribing to more emails. Remember whenever you come across websites that require your email address to sign-up etc. and there’s a tiny space at the bottom of the form that you can tick for newsletters and promotion updates? Yes, I’m talking about those. Most of the time, they come separately from the T&C tick box and you can avoid from receiving any future mails. This is where you can decide right here right now to curb junk coming to your inbox in the future.
2. Nip the Annoying Emails from the Bud
Personally for me, the problem with deleting junk mails that you don’t need or aren’t interested in is that they will come back. What’s more effective is to unsubscribe them before you tick them off to the bin. It saves you the time of deleting the same spam-like mails from appearing again. If you’re using Gmail like I do, here is what you can do:
- Click open to any of the mails you don’t want to see anymore
- Scroll to the bottom of that email and click on “Unsubscribe”. If it’s not below the message, then it may be somewhere else in the email.
- You’re saved!
Now all you’re left to do is to delete those pesky emails and not expect them to return ever again.
3. Say Hello to “Filtering”
Filtering is great for avoiding dozens and hundreds of emails from your main inbox or primary inbox. You can make full use of “categories” such as the ones in Gmail – Primary, Social and Promotions, or folders/labels.
My email follows the category tabs based on certain functions:
- Primary – person-to-person emails, especially with my friends, lecturers and work purposes.
- Social – Updates from my social media, news subscriptions, etc.
- Promotions – Shopping deals, discount announcements, etc.
You can edit, add or remove these category tabs according to what suits you as well. However, for this post, I’ll be sharing on steps to filter your messages according to these categories.
Step 1: Click one of the messages you want to filter. Select the three dot button at the top
Step 2: Time to create your filter
Step 3: Apply label to the message AND/OR category
4. DELETE EVERYTHING!
This especially applies to the messages that you have just filtered according to the category tabs such as Primary, Social and Promotions. Since they’re all sorted, you can safely delete them all without risking the important emails you still need. To save time from ticking each box of email to delete, make the option “Select all messages” and “Select all #### conversations” in the top blue bold text before removing them. This is to make sure that all the messages in that category are selected for deletion.
5. Have Separate Email Accounts for Work and Personal Purposes
For some, the idea of having multiple email accounts may be daunting and complicated to manage. It makes sense, I suppose, as it makes signing up across different websites through the same email simple and straightforward. However, the truth is when you have only one email account, it becomes extremely complicated (unless you’re a whizz with the filters, folders and categories).
The disadvantages of possessing one account are many, including being at risk of mismanaging personal and work emails (like sending the wrong email to someone, I’ve been there many times), your inbox flooded with promotion announcements and newsletters from your personal activities, and having trouble to organise messages through your public email address/business contact email.
To avoid the hassle and mess, create different email accounts for different purposes. At the very least, have two main emails for work and play (personal).
6. Regularly Check your Emails
But how often you may wonder. I make it a habit to check my emails at least 2-3 times a day. I may just be a full-time student who doesn’t have that many messages blasting my inbox, but at the very least, I try to clear as many emails as I can throughout the day.
If you’re working, then you might want to clear out your messages more often. According to
lifehack.org, working professionals could check their email at least 5 times a day and you shouldn’t spend more than 2 minutes per email unless absolute necessary. The most important thing you should prioritise is your actual work and not replying to emails.
Times of the day to check your emails:
- In the morning
- Mid-morning
- After lunch
- Mid-afternoon
- End of the day
And that pretty much sums up some of my tips to have a fresh and cleaner email inbox! Let me know what other tips that work for you in the comment box below!
P.S.
I recently uploaded a new YouTube video on my channel. Check it out here!
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