It’s difficult to believe just how quickly this year is flying by, and yet here we are, recovering from our Thanksgiving feasts and preparing our homes and families for further celebrations. As the holiday season comes into full swing, there’s no doubt we have a lot on our hands to juggle–between the festivities, the visits with family and friends, and the time away from the office, it can be easy to let your email inbox get out of hand. How can you ensure you don’t return to work to find an overwhelming number of messages awaiting you?

Luckily for you, Firewall Computer Services is here to save the holidays with a few quick and easy tips to help you manage your inbox like a pro. Here are three ways to subdue that email list before it grows out of control:

 

• Your spam filters are your best friends. One of the main reasons why email inboxes tend to grow till they’re no longer manageable is, unfortunately, because a lot of your correspondence is coming from spam. Every time you sign up for a webinar or ask for more information from a company, there’s a good chance they put you on an email list so they can continue to send you new information. Take a deep breath and realize that opening every single piece of email just isn’t feasible if you want to keep your sanity. Be sure to mark annoying or salesy emails as spam as they come in so they won’t bother you in the future.

• Stop treating your email like an online storage unit. Think about the last time you opened an email that you didn’t immediately respond to. What did you do? Did you delete it, flag it and set it in a separate folder, or simply move onto the next one? It’s so easy to get into the habit of simply letting your opened emails stay where they are rather than dealing with them promptly. Instead of taking up those precious gigabytes of storage, start getting into the habit of taking care of your emails as they come–whether that means setting them aside in a specific folder until you have the necessary information to respond, responding immediately, or simply deleting them. Seeing a clean inbox will help take a lot of stress off your shoulders.

• Don’t forget about your categories! If you use Gmail or another similar email client, you may have noticed that they give you the opportunity to automatically organize your mail by categories. This is an extremely helpful feature, as it will allow you to prioritize quickly and easily. Obviously, you’ll want to deal with emails from colleagues and clients before you take care of messages from social media and promotional sites. If your email system doesn’t automatically categorize, you can set specific keywords and phrases to help get those messages into the right places.

By practicing a little forethought and making organization a daily habit, you can rest assured that you won’t be overwhelmed by your inbox when you return to the office. To learn more or to schedule your consultation, get in touch with the experts at Firewall Computer Services today by calling (407) 647-3430.