I've always seen email as kind of like a
hydra answer one more shall take its
place and well this has definitely been
my personal experience of email I know
that I am a by no means alone in this
matter especially given that there's
data out there to show the average
knowledge worker spends about
twenty-eight percent of their workweek
on you and that is absolutely ridiculous
so today I want to share some of the
tips and tactics that I've learned over
the past few years for making email a
less stressful and less time-consuming
part of my life now I got to put this
out there right up front I am by no
means an email expert and I know you can
probably find some other productivity
gurus out there with crazy GTD inspired
inbox zero workflows that they get done
at 6 a.m. every single morning before
doing their morning yoga coffee
meditation but I have at least been able
to tame my email so to speak and it's
been a lot less stressful in the past
few years then it used to be when I was
a little bit earlier on in my
entrepreneurial career so whether you're
a student or you're a professional being
varied and emails from your boss or
you're an entrepreneur like me hopefully
some of the tips Manan share in this
video will help you tame your inbox as
well and just to cover our bases we've
got to start with the obvious one
archived messages or delete them if you
don't need them anymore don't treat your
inbox as an archive that should be
something separate and should be
representing only things that you need
to take action on otherwise the archive
or the trash should be where emails go
alright with that pretty simple tip out
of the way let's move on to our first
big tip don't use your inbox as a task
manager and this is crucial but I know
it's also very hard to do and a lot of
us tend to do this we see emails in our
inbox we know we have to respond to them
but to respond to them we have to be
like 18 other things there's this whole
process and as a result the inbox tends
to pile up in fact there are even email
forgiveness days out there for people
who have just let emails fester for days
weeks or even months since they just
haven't had the time to get all the
preliminary or dependent steps done
first but there is indeed a better way
you do not have to use your email inbox
as a task list because that is what a
task manager is for so when you see
emails in your inbox you have to take
action on whether it be responding or
actually doing something
follow these steps first and foremost I
think it's a pretty smart idea to
dedicate a specific time of day to email
and unless email notifications are
incredibly important to you unless
you're like Elon Musk or something take
those notifications off of your phone
dedicate one part of the day for email
and have the rest of a dedicated to work
or you know actually doing things that
you want to do so once you have that
pre-planned specific time today set for
processing email and that time rolls
around sit down at your computer or your
phone and first I think it's a good idea
to get rid of any emails that really
don't need any action from you basically
just clear out the junk now when it
comes to doing this part a lot of people
get stuck on the question of whether to
archive or delete their emails and
honestly this is kind of a moot point
these days since most email programs
give you a ton of space restoring emails
but I follow a simple general rule if I
think that I ever might need that emails
information in the future then I archive
it otherwise I delete it and for the
emails that you do decide to delete it's
likely that some of those or maybe even
most of them are newsletters or
marketing messages and I know because I
receive a ton of these every single day
and because I even send some out every
Sunday with my newsletter
now with these kinds of messages in
particular the Hydra metaphor is
especially apt because you know that
even if you delete the one you're
looking at right now there's gonna be
two more coming in this week no matter
what you do unless you go down to the
bottom that email and start hitting that
unsubscribe link so don't just delete
emails if you know they're gonna be
coming in the future
start unsubscribing for marketing
messages and newsletters that no longer
give you any value and yes that does
include my newsletter if you're not
getting value from the emails that I
send you then please get me out of your
inbox for one I actually pay per
subscriber on my MailChimp plan and two
if I'm not providing you enough value
that I don't deserve to be in your inbox
anyway and that's how every single
marketer should think anyway moving on
to emails that you do actually have to
take action on there's kind of two
different types of email here first type
of email is the kind that you can easily
take action on within you know five
minutes or less and if you find an email
like that go ahead and process it don't
get it in your task manager just reply
to it or take action on it and get it on
to the archive that just leaves us with
the second type of email the type of
email that tends to fester in your inbox
for weeks or months because it's got 27
different steps and dependencies and
you've also got work to do in video
games to play why should you spend your
time on that well maybe you don't have
time to spend your time on that right
now but it sure
sit in your inbox instead get the
details into your task manager remember
your task manager and your calendar and
your note-taking system these are all
parts of the system that should hold
pieces of data that you need to refer
back to in the future and in some cases
remind you of actions you need to take
your email is a communications medium
it's not part of that action-oriented
system so don't treat it like one now
when it comes to actually implementing
this you can't of course just copy the
details of an email to your to-do list
and make that task and then remember to
go find the email later if it needs a
reply but a lot of task managers these
days have more elegant options for
processing emails for example todoist
actually lets you copy an email address
for each project in your task list and
you can email tasks into it or you can
actually install their Chrome extension
which puts a little mini todoist
in the bottom of your Gmail area so you
can actually add a task as an email and
one thing I like about todoist in
particular is when you add an email as a
task it actually links right back to the
email so you don't even have to go into
Gmail and find it regardless of how you
do it once you have an email in your
task manager then the process for
dealing with it is exactly the same give
it a due date ooh give it labels if you
want to get a done when it needs to be
done and then if that email needs a
reply then reply and consider that
checked off your task list big tip
number two use tags and search
harmoniously now there was a time back
in college where I dutifully tagged
every single message that came in I had
this beautifully organized hierarchical
tag structure in Gmail that I was so
proud of and I thought this is crucial
because if I ever need to find a piece
of information I know where to find it
it's almost like having a folder
structure right but then I realized
something that should have been obvious
in retrospect Gmail is built on Google
and Google is the world's best search
engine so for the most part I can just
search for emails if I need to find them
after I've archived them so now I use
tags or labels and search in tandem I'm
very selective about which messages I
actually tagged since tagging messages
does take time and I'd rather be playing
video games plus again most messages can
be found just by searching so for the
most part if I'm gonna keep message
after processing it I just hit the
archive button but there are certain
cases where I do still use tags for
example the receipts for a lot of
expenses in my business often come to my
email now with the paper ones that tend
to digitize them and get them into
Evernote but with the email ones I just
give them the tag receipt I've chosen to
keep tags
this particular case because a lot of
times I'm looking for a particular
receipt when I'm going through my
reconciliations for accounting at the
end of the month and I often don't know
exactly what to search for so I just
want to make sure that I have a list
that I can look at that lists every
single digital expense that I've ever
had in my business just in case there's
ever an audit in the future or for some
other reason I need to see all of those
receipts another example case would be
newsletters that I don't want to
unsubscribe from I don't necessarily
want to see in these cases I actually
have a filter which we're gonna talk
about in a few seconds that just gives
those emails a newsletter tag and then
Auto archives them that way if ever want
to go through those emails and see them
like if I'm looking for headline
inspiration for example I can see them
all in one list but they never grab my
attention when they come in because I
don't want them to do that at that time
alright big tip number three which I
kind of alluded to just a few seconds
ago filters are your friend in most
email programs there are filters you can
set up which basically do things
automatically for you so to go back to
the previous example every time a
newsletter comes in that has a specific
email address or a specific type of
headline I have a rule in my email
program that will automatically archive
it so I never see it and it gives it the
correct tag as well I've also got filter
setup that will automatically delete
messages from certain addresses or from
certain people like marketers who think
that spamming me five times is actually
gonna get a response and lastly my most
important and useful filter is a filter
for all my old email addresses that
ensures that nothing in those email
inboxes can ever go to spam now the
reason I have this filter set up and all
my old inboxes is that a few years ago I
set up forwarding rules to forward
everything from those inboxes to one big
main Gmail inbox now this ensured that I
didn't have to go check as iliyan
different email inboxes just to make
sure I wasn't missing anything it was
all coming into one place except for in
certain occasions I would notice that
important emails that were sent to one
of those old email addresses hit the
spam filter and because I never logged
in to look at those inboxes I never
noticed it so once I realized that this
was happening I set up filters to make
sure that nothing could go to spam over
there and this wasn't really a big
problem since I could trust the spam
filtering in my main inbox to catch all
the junk that brings us to big tip
number four which is to use a separate
email for logins than the one that you
use for correspondence for talking with
people on the internet now this is more
of a security tip in an organizational
tip but I still think it's really import
to do the email address that you use to
chat with people on the Internet is
basically public knowledge
every single person you've given it out
to and possibly the entire internet if
you posted it somewhere publicly knows
this email address now unfortunately the
Internet has developed in such a way
that your email address is also used as
a login credential for most web sites
additionally it's the place where
password resets go so if anyone ever got
access to your email they would be able
to send password resets and basically
hack your entire life and even if they
can't do that they at least know one of
the two keys needed to log into your
bank or your final fantasy fan fiction
forum account or any other crucial site
that you don't want people getting into
fortunately there is a way to deal with
this at least somewhat and that is to
set up a separate email address for
logging into websites and don't give
that email address out to anybody use
one email address for correspondence and
use the other one as one of those two
keys for logging in to your online
accounts and doing this has the
additional benefit or possibly even
primary benefit of making sure that it's
much less likely an attacker would know
where password resets we're going to go
again if you use a publicly known email
address then people know our password
reset links are going but if your email
address is secret then no one really
knows now while having a somewhat secret
email slash username combo is really
helpful what is downright crucial for
your online security is to make sure
that you have strong unique passwords on
all of your online accounts it seems
like every single week brings new hack
or corporate data breach and the problem
is that once a past rest leaked in one
place it can be tried anywhere else so
if you've repeated passwords in
different online accounts then one leak
or one hack makes all those other
accounts vulnerable of course the
problem here is that it's nearly
impossible to memorize so many unique
passwords especially if they're strong
and lengthy but fortunately that isn't a
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