Death by email is not a pleasant experience.
Now I am not here to say email is evil or even bad. It’s great. Really, it is, I swear. I mean that! Well, mostly, I guess.
But I recall the time when I was about 10 years old and taking a walk with my sweet grandfather. He always used to counsel me, “Moderation in all things Stevie. Too much of anything is bad for you.”
So what do you do, how do you handle the never-ending avalanche of email? Here are five solutions:
1. Declare e-mail bankruptcy. This is a fairly recent phenomenon, and certainly an understandable one, albeit pretty bold as well. The idea here is that when your inbox gets so full that you either are looking at emails that have been sitting there for, say, a year, or there are so many unopened and unanswered emails that you just can’t see a way out, you simply delete them all and start over.
2. Schedule it.
3. Use an autoresponder or outsource it.
4. Use the phone.
5. Hire an assistant.
Photo by clix.
Jaclyn on November 26th, 2008 at 11:28 am
I strongly agree. email is a great thing…but it can get very out of hand and overwhelming if you don’t stay on top of it. you go on vacation for a week and you come back to 50 email’s and by time your done soting through them you have 50 more. I saw a show a few day’s ago where a lady hired an assistant to do various tasks for her and one of them was reading her unopened email that amounted to about 150! great idea there!
cassy on November 26th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Email is an effective means of communication for business and personal use. Everyday, I read my emails and responds immediately to my clients and friends. So I dont have any problems when I have lots of emails. Its up to a person if he/she is delaying to read his/her emails but then if you are that really a busy person, so have an option…
Hire an assistant!
theblues on December 4th, 2008 at 10:30 am
nice info,.. Email is helpful but sometime Email make me so tired if I leave for a day, some email stack and I already confuse.. but, email is good way to know information updates.