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Business email overload 2019 Part 3 – fast or slow lane to your inbox

A constant problem associated with business email overload and hence information overload is picking out the important emails from all the dross. Deleting the less important ones often results in deleting those you really wanted, especially when using a mobile device.  They key is to remember it is your inbox and no one (at least no email) should arrive without your permission.

See the path to your inbox as an information highway along which emails travel but you and you alone decide which travel in the fast lane and arrive directly in your inbox and which travel in the slow lane via a width restrictor (folder).

Over the next week if you truly want to reduce your business email overload intake, do an inbox audit to benchmark your email intake using this simple five step exercise.

1. Review each email you receive and assign it a basic priority – high; medium or low.
2. For the emails you want, decide whether they travel in either the fast lane direct to your inbox or the slow lane via a folder.
3. Write rules for all those which are to travel in the slow lane to divert them away from the inbox to a safe holding place.
4. For all the low priority emails try to find a way to stop them arriving in the first place (eg unsubscribe, tell the sender to remove you from their list).
5. For all the high priority emails decide whether or not you need to be alerted when they arrive. If so implement a suitable mechanism.

You must be absolutely ruthless otherwise at the end of the week you will still be suffering with business email and information overload and your inbox will remain heavily congested.

This blog is part of the series being written for IORG on whether or not business email overload will still be a problem in 2019.

Tags: Business email overload, Inbox audit, Reduce business email overload

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