Does your email drive you crazy? Is your inbox overflowing? Do you check it often throughout the day and find yourself getting sidetracked and not getting other stuff done? Yeah, I’ve been there too. Here are five tips that might help:

1. Schedule a block of time in your calendar each day to check your email, preferably not first thing in the morning or the time of day when you’re feeling most productive. If you get sidetracked you’ll risk losing motivation to do the other things on your list.
2. Keep your business and your personal email accounts separate. My business email goes to Outlook. My personal mail goes to a Gmail account that I can access on my phone when I’m out. It’s perfect because I can check my personal mail when I’m waiting in line to pick up the kids or at the post office. I send all newsletters and Yahoo Group emails to Gmail as well.
3. Maintain only a few folders in your email account. I have my Inbox, my archived mail, and one for newsletters. All the newsletters I receive are filtered automatically to the newsletter folder so I can read them at my leisure. All other mail goes to my inbox, where I read, take action, delete and archive my messages daily. I try to keep my inbox as close to empty as possible.
4. If you can’t take action on an email right away, turn it into a task, then delete or archive it. I just picked up this tip and I think this will help me immensely get the rest of my email in my inbox cleaned up. The ones sitting in there now are essentially my to do items. Brilliant.
5. Unsubscribe from anything that isn’t really important. This goes for all your Yahoo Groups’ messages, ads from companies and newsletters you never read. It’s amazing how much email you can cut out of your life by doing this.

What other tips do you have to share? Add a comment or send me a Tweet @savvydoula.

Until tomorrow, get busy and clean up your email account! You’ll be glad you did!

Tags: doula business, doula business tips, email organization tips, email tips

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