Social Network: Declutter e-mail, improve productivity

They not only clog up our inbox but also our precious attention. I have been launching my own surgical strikes to destroy spam and clean up my inbox as a way to improve my overall work productivity.  

Here are some of the ways that I would recommend. UnRoll.Me: This new web based application does wonders to quickly sift through your email inbox and quickly fish out the mailing lists. It lists all the mailing lists and gives you the option to unsubscribe from them easily. I rolled out this program and in under a minute, it showed about a hundred mailing lists that I’m subscribed to, many of them unsolicited. It took me less than two minutes to weed them out. 

For useful mailing lists, you have the option to ‘Roll’ them which means that all useful newsletters come clubbed as a single email. Use email templates: When you look at your emails, you will notice that you can easily categorise them into similar batches. By saving up different email formats, it saves you a lot of time from typing the same mails again from scratch. You would be surprised how much time you over by following this method. Shorter emails: Get to the point. Let the action statement be at the beginning of the email. Dedicated email time:  One of the biggest wasters of time is checking your email often. It’s a habit that we develop and we subconsciously do this without realising that it is a huge drain on our attention. A good way to be cleverer with your time is to schedule pre-determined set time to check and answer emails. 

You will be amazed how productive this single tip can be. Unless you are in customer support, you should be just fine following this rule. Some of the busiest CEOs follow this rule that has immensely helped their productivity. Report spam: Should you get unsolicited email, don’t just delete it. Instantly mark it as spam. What this does is that, not only will it delete the email; it will also block any further emails from coming in to the inbox from that sender. It takes the same effort as deleting but saves you further headaches.