Declutter your inbox

The constant ping of notifications and hundreds of unread emails waiting for your attention can be overwhelming. Email can be a massive distraction and rather than being used as a tool for productivity it becomes a stressor in itself. To declutter your inbox is like decluttering your home or office space. It brings mental space and peace in the same way. So, before you throw your laptop out of the window in a fit of disillusioned rage try these three top tips.

3 top tips to declutter your inbox

Turn off notifications

It’s been said many times but notifications are the enemy of productivity and calm. They have been designed to attract our attention and exacerbate the busyness epidemic. Who can resist the lure of an unread message? Those little icons are there to tempt us in. And once we’re in our inboxes it can be really hard to get out again. Simple answer? Turn off the notifications.

It’s easy to do in most email packages and working out how to stop icons, noises and pop ups is time well spent. If you use a phone as well as a computer, make sure you switch them off there too. Now you’ll go to your email when you’re ready, not every time something lands. Even this little change can have a mammoth impact.

End the day with an empty inbox

I’ve tried loads of different ways of managing my email and the most effective has been to keep my inbox empty. At the end of every day (and at various points throughout the day when I have time) I block out time in my calendar to empty my inbox. I block out half an hour and it’s usually plenty. I go through each email in the order they’ve arrived and either:

Delete. If you’ve read it and it’s not valuable – the many ‘thank you’ emails fall into this category. If it’s from a mailing list you aren’t interested in, unsubscribe and save yourself the effort of deleting them in the future.
Archive. If you’ve read it and there’s no need for a response or an action, archive it straight away.
Flag and archive. If there’s an action needed or you need to read attached documents, flag it and archive it. Assuming you’re using Outlook, this will create a task for you which you can then action from your to do list.
Respond and archive. If you can respond in a less than 2 mins, send the response and archive the email. Please help us save energy by not sending ‘thank you’ emails for anything other than the exceptional. Together we can change this culture and save the planet.

In a short space of time you’ll have a completely empty inbox, a clear list of tasks for the next day and have provided a quick response to those simple things. And, I can’t tell you how good it feels to leave work every day with a decluttered inbox. Smugness guaranteed!

Don’t make your emails your first task

If you’ve started clearing your inbox at the end of the day, you probably won’t find this hard. So, why not start by looking at your to do list and spend 5 mins planning before you are dragged in to today’s barrage of messages.

You should already have all the flagged emails from yesterday, so you can look through them and identify any which need to be completed today. Add any other tasks you need to complete and you’ll have your key important tasks ready to go. You could crack on and get a few done before you open your inbox. But, even if you dive straight in you have your own priority list which you can then use to assess the priority of anything new that’s come in.