Are you suffering from email chaos?
With many business owners working from home, they have a lot more time to be living in their email. Many businesses choose Outlook to manage their email accounts.
With my work, I have the pleasure of working with many email systems. I work on a Windows 10 platform and rely heavily on my Outlook for desktop. I wrote about this back in 2014.
Here is the 3-2-1 Chaos Buster for this week.
My topic?
CONTROLLING EMAIL CHAOS!
I have done webinars and public events teaching about email. I recently had an associate ask for tips on creating folders and setting up rules in their desktop Outlook.
Let us look at a few ways YOU can control your email chaos in Outlook.
Angela Jia Kim says, “Aim for the stars and land somewhere high in the sky. But as I always say, the sky’s not the limit: there’s the moon too.”
My Three Chaos Buster Thoughts
One.
Synchronicity: For my business, the best money I spent was using an Exchange account for my email address. An Exchange account allows me to automatically sync my email, contacts, and calendar with every device I own. The time I saved has more than paid for the Exchange account. Microsoft 365 Business Standard comes at a price tag of $150 annually.
Two.
Folders: I operate on a zero-inbox policy. By the end of the day, I have put the email in my project management tool for future action, or I have filed in a folder in Outlook. Folders are not necessary for operating in Outlook. You can survive nicely with the defaults. I need to audit my folders because I have accumulated many over the years. Outlook’s new search feature is incredible.
Three.
Rules: Using rules helps get those emails out of your inbox and where they belong. It allows you to put items that do not need immediate attention in a subfolder where you can keep them unread until you are ready to act on them.
My Two Chaos Buster Inspirations
One.
In 2015 I wrote the first copy of my eBook, Email Solutions.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but eventually, you need to delete some mail in your inbox. If you have over 3,000 unread messages, there is a problem with your system.”
Since then, I have seen HUGE inboxes. Unsearchable due to size.
Two.
Pamela Rutledge, Ph.D., M.B.A., Director of the Media Psychology Research Center says,
“…email management comes down to some more personality-related behaviors—a combination of organization, procrastination, perfectionism, fear of loss, and the ability to let go.”
One Action Item
Start somewhere. Let go of one thing. Unsubscribe from a newsletter that you never read. Take one step to reduce the noise in your inbox.
Do you need help controlling your email chaos? Email me today with your questions!