Is your email overwhelming? Do you have so much news that you don’t know where or how to read it? Do you have so much junk mail that you miss or lose important messages? It might be time to clean up your inbox a little.
I find it really helps to keep my inbox small and organized. I keep important messages in folders for easy access, I delete the redundant messages, and I struggle to keep junk mail at bay. This will make your email inbox work for you and make it a lot easier to find and reply to important messages.
Here are some super simple tips you can do in minutes every day:
Read your email inbox. If an email doesn’t require you to act, doesn’t contain any important information, or doesn’t want to save anything, toss it in the trash. These are usually junk mail, newsletters, auto replies, notifications, ads, etc. Click the delete button or the tiny image of a trash can in the subject line.
If you change your mind, find the message in your trash and restore it or drag it back to your inbox.
Verify that you can unsubscribe from unimportant, repetitive emails. But first check the sender. If the email address looks questionable (someone you don’t know, a company whose name is misspelled, etc.), the safest option is to just delete it. Or you can mark it as “phishing” and “report” to the email provider.
If you know the sender (for example, if you bought something online and are now on the company’s mailing list), open the email and look for the “Unsubscribe” button. It’s usually downstairs and very small. Take some time to unsubscribe from emails that you know you no longer use.
If you have an inbox full of junk, you can delete the entire inbox and start over with an empty inbox! To delete multiple messages at once:
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Now that you have a tidy inbox, you can find those important emails much faster and easier. If an email is critical (requires immediate action or response), act now. Save to a folder or delete.
If you want to keep the email, or if the email contains information that you need to act on later, you can file it. Create a new folder (give it a meaningful name so you know what it is for) and drag and drop the message into the folder.
If you know that certain messages always have to go to a specific folder, you can “create a rule” so that all messages from a specific sender (or with a specific subject line, whatever) are automatically put into a folder by the email provider you created for it.
Take some time each day to sort your inbox, act on items, and delete old messages. Soon it will be second nature!
Kelly
Kelly is a librarian at the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County. As an adult programming specialist, she focuses on providing adults with the library programs they love. (Children can’t have all the fun!). She only reads non-fiction and picture books. She believes everything you could ever need or want is in the library somewhere. Including friends.
This press release was prepared by the Youngstown & Mahoning County Public Library. The views expressed here are your own.
