NEW YEAR, New You, New Email Inbox?

For many of us (myself included), January is a time to make a fresh start, and to adopt new and improved habits to help us achieve our goals for the year ahead.

Image by New Africa studio via Canva

Also for many of us, email causes a lot of stress. But email is supposed to be a tool to help us get the “real work done!

Now might be the perfect time to CLEAR OUT YOUR INBOX and take charge of your EMAIL!

In this week’s talk About Talk podcast episode you’ll learn 3 general things you can do to get your INBOX under control and start using it as the tool is supposed to be:

1️⃣ Behavioural Changes
2️⃣ Technology Hacks
3️⃣ Optimizing Your Sent Mail

Here are a few of my favourite email hacks
to get you started!

Let’s start here: how we conceptualize our email:

Let that sink in.

OK – here are some of my favourite email hacks that I hope will help you use this tool more effectively:

📧 BATCH YOUR EMAIL TIME & turn off notifications

Designate a specific time during your workday for reading and responding to emails
There’s so much research that tells us to turn off notifications. Just do it!

📧 Feeling overwhelmed by your inbox? SORT BY SUBJECT

Use the filtering function to find and remove unnecessary emails

📧 SET ALERTS for high priority senders

When you tackle your inbox (at the designated time, of course), the most important emails will get your attention first.

📧 UNSUBSCRIBE from emails that you rarely read

Go into the search function of your email and type “unsubscribe.” Then go through your email subscriptions one-by-one
The criteria isn’t “which ones I wish I read” it’s “which ones I ACTUALLY read!”
(Yes of course i hope you keep subscribing to this weekly communication coaching newsletter!)

📧 USE FOLDERS and only touch each email once

Sort your emails immediately! You can always find them again later with the search function
Challenge yourself to only touch each email once. DO you really want to close it and go back later? Maybe just look after it now?

📧 Optimize your SENT email

Be concise.
Customize the title
Minimize the number of emails you send, and minimize the number of recipients

Image by alexsl via Canva

Stop contributing to the the email fury!

That’s it for this week. I hope 2023 will be the year you take charge of your INBOX, and I hope this episode has given you the tools you need to make that a reality!

If you know anyone who would be interested in learning tips for clearing out their inbox, please forward this email to them. THANK YOU! And if you have any questions, suggestions or feedback, please email me anytime!

Talk soon,