picture by chelsea chen. (flickr)
What is your 1st habit you’d like to do every morning after you wake up? If it is checking email so you are in the same situation with mine few months ago. And let me tell you that it is a waste of time, loosing of focus and producing procrastination.
I have been through this for years and one day I just realized it shouldn’t be that way. I have burned a lot of time checking emails sent to my inbox instead of focusing on what is important to me today.
Everyday you wake up at 7am, checking emails till 8, then stop doing that by 12. Why? After reading all emails you actually forgot what is in your to do list. You continue checking Facebook, Twitter and reading the magazines. The ads that come with the emails pulled you to websites, product new features, promotions etc and you keep reading it until your morning is gone, it sucks your creativity and productivity. How to stop it?
1. Stop newsletter subscriptions
Newsletters are the 1st common source that mess up your inbox. Normally after you’ve purchased a product or service, the seller want email from you so they will contact you for future sells. The newsletters list increased day by day and it sucks your time and productivity. Cleaning it up is the 1st thing you should do.
2. Mark ads as spams
Advertisements are similar to newsletters, they are multiplied as time goes by. Most of them are crap and you don’t have a reason to keep them unless you want to burn your time. Mark ones that come from unknown sources as spam, and unsubscribe to what are not important. The definition of what is important is that you should ask yourself: what happen if you’re not receiving these? Will it ruin your life? The answer probably is no.
3. Archive important emails
For any emails that you want to keep so you may look back to it in future, just archive it. Archiving is a great way to backup emails without deleting them. Emails like your purchasing records, transaction reference and account info are examples.
4. Using rules
Filters or email rules are powerful tools to keep your emails organized. All the common email services today support filters. It set rules for the inbox to place coming emails in folders. For example your colleague Bob is one of the people who you used to communicate with, you create a rule that named “Bob” and every time he sends you an email it is placed in that folder and highlighted so you know that Bob has sent you one. You may have “Work”, “Family”, “Personal” or whatever. The key here is to get your emails organized.
5. Keep practicing
New emails are coming and the rules above need to be updated. Keep doing that is a good habit. Once you wake up and your inbox is empty, you could believe that you have increased your productivity and saved a lot of time. People say time is gold, to me it is more than gold because it one of the things that cannot be traded.
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