Here's a simple way to solve email overload, permanently. I can teach people step-by-step in less than an hour how to do this (and let me know if you need help), but this quick overview describes it nicely.
The solution is to empty your email inbox, at least once a day, using the four steps below.
(Of course, the first time you go through this, it will take some extra time to clear out a bulging inbox, but after that it really just takes a couple of minutes a day.)
STEP 1: Delete any emails that you don't need any more - newsletters, meeting announcements, spam mail, one-word replies, that kind of stuff. Just get rid of all of it. Sorting by sender, and by Subject, may help to reveal whole swaths of messages to dump.
STEP 2: File or archive anything you may need later - important messages, documentation, FYIs you need to save.
Now the inbox contains only action items, or todos.
STEP 3: Use the "two-minute rule" and complete any todos that can be accomplished in two minutes or less, and then delete them. (Or archive them if you prefer, but just get them out of the inbox.)
Now the inbox contains only action items that require several minutes, hours, days, months, who knows, maybe years to accomplish. This is where most people have no idea what to do, since completing all that work right now is impossible, and filing or archiving these messages would make them too hard to retrieve again (let alone prioritize, take notes on, and generally manage). It feels easier to leave them in the inbox. And so they sit there and multiply until the person is plagued with stress and anxiety.
Here's the key - the one step that most people have never been taught...
STEP 4: Move the action items onto a todo list. This is the key to overcoming email overload, so I'll say it again: YOU HAVE TO MOVE ACTION ITEMS ONTO A TODO LIST.
How do you get action items from the inbox to the todo list? Different people use different tools - there are many available - but I recommend my own online to do list. Good Todo allows you to forward those action-item emails to your todo list, which separates today's todos from those coming in the future.
Good Todo is an online to do list that works via the Web browser on any computer - Mac, Windows, or Linux - and is compatible with every email program: Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail, Yahoo Mail, iPhones, Blackberries, you name it.
Once you have your Good Todo account (sign up here), just forward each big todo in your email inbox to your Good Todo list, depending on what day - today, next week, or any future day in the next year - you want it to show up. Forward to today's list what you can accomplish today; forward others as far as you can into the future. Then delete them from the inbox. Once you do that, you'll have an empty inbox and a manageable todo list to get through today. It's remarkably simple.
Here's how to email todos to Good Todo. Send an email to today@goodtodo.com and it will show up on today's list: the Subject line will be the title of the todo, and the body of the message will be stored as well. Send an email to tomorrow@goodtodo.com and it will not show up on today's list - but will appear tomorrow. (Any undone todos from today will also roll over onto tomorrow.)
Forward an email to 2d@goodtodo.com (or 2days@goodtodo.com) and it will show up in two days. Or forward it to monday@goodtodo.com and it will show up on Monday. You can even email a specific date, like 14dec@goodtodo.com or dec14@goodtodo.com, to create a todo on December 14.
I can almost guarantee that if you try this out, using the method I've described, you will feel less stressed, work more productively, and have more time for things that really matter - family, friends, and creative pursuits. Give it a try - here's the online to do list - and let me know what you think.
P.S. I also described this method in more detail in my book Bit Literacy.
about
I didn't set out to work in IT—my background is in humanities, and my first job was in an advertising agency. I was assigned my first IT project, designing and implementing a new Mac network, in 1989, when the company's network and DB administrator quit and took the client database with him. If I remember correctly, he also took one or two rolls of coax cable. Crazy times, made even more interesting by the fact tha computers didn't have hard drives, and floppy disks did it all.