Stop Your Email Inbox From Ruining Your Life -

Managing the influx of email is a constant battle. To stay effective and sane there are a number of key measures that I found really helpful. Here are five of them. First: Try to use email more effectively / “advise your colleagues” how to use email more effectively.

Email is a great tool, when used and applied appropriately.
Unfortunately some emails are sometimes “not relevant”, “half relevant” or simply redundant
To address use and apply the 10 key tips – read here

Second: Use folders and rules

Create folders to apply rules to filter emails
Make sure you prioritize correctly

Third: Use color coding

As an example use red for client, blue for line manager
All unread are bold all read are normal
Work from top down and move emails

Fourth: Use the inbox as a task list

Group all emails into conversations
Work from top list in the conversation down and not bottom up
Once email has been “processed” move into a completed folder

Fifth: Ensure each day your inbox is less than a page long

Make sure that before EOB you have cleared out your inbox so that you only have one page left
That will help with “staying on top of” our emails

Applying those measures has helped me to manage my email inbox effectively. It's important to remember is that these five measures only deal with the “symptoms” of your problem. To really impact email you should try and apply these 10 top tips for getting your message across. Gunnar Menzel is a VP enterprise architect at Capgemini. Read all Capgemini blogs here.