How I Freed Myself from Mountains of Email Part 1
Image by Lusi, taken from stock.xchng
“One of the effects of living with electric information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload. There’s always more than you can cope with.” - Marshall McLuhan
Too much email can cause insanity. If you think information overload is restricted to your email server and client, you’re either mistaken or a much freer person than I am. Emails, whether they’re spam or not, take up so much of our time - from checking to reading and the thoughts and worries that linger after reading them.
The truth is, I’ve had enough. I no longer wish to be a slave to email! And I think I’m succeeding. Here’s what I’ve done so far.
Tightened spam protection. I made my spam protection cruel. As in take-no-prisoners type of cruel. My Outlook add-ins were good, but the spam was filtered and removed after it showed up on my inbox. So I would still look at it and watch if there were false positives, although false positives never happened. Instead, I went on the server itself and tweaked the spam filters from there to prevent me from receiving spam in my inbox at all. I did make a whitelist of domains to avoid any false positives.
Unsubscribed email notifications from all social networking sites. From now on, any updates, messages, pokes, or whatever coming in from my social network memberships (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) will be viewed on-site, and not via email. It is rare that someone contacts me through these sites, and I really don’t want to receive notifications about who updated their blog, asked a question, or poked me. If this is too drastic for you, most social networking sites allow for a great deal of flexibility when it comes to email notifications - you can be selective about what you receive.
Removed all email notifications from my blogs. This includes personal blogs. Why? Because I write on these blogs regularly anyway, so I can moderate comments and trackbacks before or after I write a post.
Modified mailing list subscriptions. I either unsubscribed to mailing lists I don’t read or opted to view messages via the web rather than in my Inbox. For important mailing lists (re: work), I just opt to receive weekly or daily digests - depending on email frequency.
These are just four steps I took to complete email management. Read on for part 2 of this post.
Tags: Email, email efficiency, emailingRelated Stories
POSTED IN: E-mail, Email, GMail, General work pimps, Internet tips, Software tips
13 opinions for How I Freed Myself from Mountains of Email Part 1
How I Freed Myself from Mountains of Email Part 2
Mar 6, 2008 at 4:09 pm
[…] This is part 2 of “How I Freed Myself from Mountains of Email“. […]
How I Freed Myself from Mountains of Email Part 2 | money news blog
Mar 6, 2008 at 8:26 pm
[…] This is part 2 of “How I Freed Myself from Mountains of Email“. […]
Yvonne Russell (Grow Your Writing Business)
Mar 8, 2008 at 1:39 am
Hi Celine
Thanks for these 2 articles… some great tips. I’m going to give these a try.
Tame Your Email Overload - Tips From Fellow Bloggers
Mar 9, 2008 at 1:23 pm
[…] was inspired by Celine Roque’s posts about how she tamed her email overload at Pimp My Work - Part 1 and Part […]
You’ve freed up some time for yourself, now what?
Mar 9, 2008 at 2:10 pm
[…] how I freed myself from mountains of email? Ever since then, it’s like I’ve been given the gift of time. Roughly an extra 4-5 […]
Own Your Time
Mar 17, 2008 at 5:53 am
[…] too many emails each day, do something about it. I’ve discussed this at length in my “How I Freed Myself from Mountains of Email” series. If you haven’t read it yet, I suggest that you look it over and see how you […]
Warning: Too Much Information is Dangerous to Your Health
Mar 18, 2008 at 7:40 am
[…] already talked about reducing one’s email, but here are other information materials you can cut back […]
Warning: Too Much Information is Hazardous to Your Health | money news blog
Mar 18, 2008 at 8:35 am
[…] already talked about reducing one’s email, but here are other information materials you can cut back […]
Amir - I reduced Email Overload
Mar 23, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Hi Celine,
Like you I struggled for a long time with too much email. Until I realized that I can’t really control the amount of incoming emails. And since I can’t control it, then it’s useless to try and fight it. Instead I manage it using an Outlook add-on called MoveIT.
It’s a different approach then the rest that I’ve seen. You basically need to turn your inbox into your to-do list. I find that if I have a folder called “later”/”not know”/”tomorrow”, the email I move there, tend to stay there and never get handled. Instead, I try to achieve a clean inbox. It’s easy to do it using MoveIT, as the process of filing the emails is so easy. Give it a try, or check my blog.
March Roundup for Pimp Your Work
Apr 1, 2008 at 5:30 am
[…] How I freed myself from mountains of email Part 1 and Part 2 […]
March Roundup for Pimp Your Work | money news blog
Apr 1, 2008 at 7:32 am
[…] How I freed myself from mountains of email Part 1 and Part 2 […]
How I Got to the 9-Hour Workweek (Part 1)
May 13, 2008 at 10:13 am
[…] have to spend hours a day on it, but that’s exactly what I did. I already wrote about how I conquered my email, so if you want to read about it, click here. Here are some changes I’ve made to the system […]
Batch Processing Can Make You More Productive
Jun 12, 2008 at 11:50 pm
[…] - I am ruthless when it comes to checking email. The trick is to deal with it once or twice a day (depending on how many emails you get), and not […]
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: