Less Email Stress

Email reading and replying can take up a lot of time, much more than you would like. I don't know about you but I haven't got time to wade through an ocean of emails every time I open my inbox so I need something to sort out the most important emails.

Too many times I have forgotten or replied late because I thought to myslef that I would reply later and then forgot about the email as new came in and the email got further and further down the list. And this is something you cannot do when you are rely on email to communicate with your clients as a WAHM! It also saves you a lot of time!

Now I am quite good at deleting posts but I have decided to get better. Here are some simple tips for you to sort your emails and make sure you don't forget an email. I favor Gmail so my tips are based on that.

* Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo etc, which email works best for you?
I have Gmail and love it! (Ok I am not happy about the latest upgrade as the email is very slow but besides that I wouldn't like to live without it) Take the time to check out the differnt options you have. i find that Gmail gives me more flexibility than other email accounts. I especially like that it will thread all replies to one email, giving you the option to collapse or expand the thread. This is especially good if you subscribe to groups and get email replies.

* Filter your emails.
I know hotmail also gives you the option to label your incoming emails but once again- I prefer gmail.

* Star or color your emails
This is a Gmail only option. Gmail will let you add a star to important emails or even put them in colors. I make sure I star every email I need to reply to and work my way up from the bottom to the top. As soon as I have replied I remove the star.

* Group your contacts.
Another great Gmail feature- group your emails or put them into categories. I haven't checked out Hotmail for this but I cannot recall seeing this on Hotmail.

* Daily cleaning is a must!
If you receive a lot of emails everyday this is especially important. Everyday I mark all the emails on the first page and only keep those really important. Doing this every day I reduce the amount of unnecessary emails.

* Where is that link now when I need it?
I keep many emails because they contain good links to different web pages and blogs. Gmail has an option that lets you search all your emails with key words. it is fast and accurate and you don't have to load page after page trying to find out which email the link came in.

These are the daily things that works for me, do you have more tips or want to tell about which email you use? Leave a comment!