Re: getting control of emails every day….

[Scattybird]

Ok since this is actually an important topic and to some extent my first reply was a little flippant.

I also have 2 email accounts, my work one and a personal one. My work one has a good spam filter so it’s important to set that up. When spam, or email that I class as rubbish even if not spam per se, comes in I can tell it to automatically put that sender into a junk folder and then I ignore it.

I get many work emails every day and try to check them in the morning and at times during the day when I need a break from other stuff.

If I only check them once a day then it takes too long to deal with them but obviously some days are worse than others and people often want an instant reply.

In the slot I allocate for emails I try to answer them but sometimes I can’t until I have more time so they go into a ‘to deal with’ folder. If they don’t then I forget about them. I also forget I have a ‘to deal with’ folder sometimes which is problematic.

The other thing is I have it set up so I can see the first line without opening it so that let’s me know if it’s worth opening and reading.

On days that I have to try and focus on something specific with a deadline, and when I know I will be easily sidetracked I use my ‘out of office’ auto reply saying that emails won’t be looked at for however long. I guess that might be tricky depending on your line manager etc.

I guess how much you can get the system to help you depends on what you use. I use Outlook at work.

I don’t need any of this for my personal account.

The biggest struggle is with myself in stopping myself from constantly checking them.

Actually I do have a second personal account that I used when I set up a facebook account and I have abandoned it because it’s full of ludicrous facebook notifications that I don’t care about and I need to get rid if facebook.

Get rid of any notification signals that tell you when an email comes in. Also only respond if you have to. Some emails are just to keep you in the loop and probably don’t even need to be read.

Please excuse typos – doing this on my ‘phone and screen is small.

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