5 easy tactics for managing emails quickly

With the pending launch and excitement of hey.com, I thought it would be good to list some tips I apply to manage my emails.

A report from Statista  said the number of emails sent and received each day would increase to over 347 billion daily emails in 2022.

As more companies and people use emails to communicate their products and services, we need systems to ensure we can process the emails that we need to see first from the lesser important ones.

Use separate email accounts

The first tip I would recommend is using a different email address for essential logins and communication.

This address should be random as possible, so bots cannot send you emails by guessing your email address.

This email should not be used for marketing and rarely given out.

For me, this means creating a separate email for Apple logins and banking services. I used Gmail to create an email address based on random letters and numbers, e.g., abc123abc at gmail.com.

By only using this email for login and banking, I know this address would not be available on the internet unless Apple or a bank released it. Something that rarely happens.

Unsubscribe from the mailing lists

The next tip is an obvious one. Unsubscribe from mailing lists you do not need. Sometimes when we sign up for services, we accidentally subscribe to marketing emails.

These marketing emails might be useful, perhaps a newsletter from a blog you follow, but most times, it is from a service trying to sell you something.

Due to GDPR rules, there should be an unsubscribe button on the email.

The benefit of unsubscribing is you get fewer emails to process, and you get fewer adverts to distract you and spend money.

Filtering

I have also created filters in Gmail to move emails with specific keywords to a temp folder. The keyword I use the most is Unsubscribe, which makes sense as many emails include this.

Most often, these are newsletters that I want to read but are not important enough to keep in the inbox. Where I can not use this, I filter by email address or keywords.

By filtering these out, it makes it easier to manage the inbox.

Every week, I delete the emails in the temp folder. The only downside is that there may be an important email, but it is easy to assign it back to the inbox.

Use a simple archiving system

I have implemented a simple folder structure for archiving emails once processed. I know some users will have specific folders for different emails.

I have opted to have a month based structure. The reason for this is that it makes it easier to archive emails.

I have also found the Gmail search easy to find emails I need. When I can't use the search, I will search the folder as I know the month the email arrived.

My folder structure is the year; I use brackets to keep it at the top and then the month as a subfolder. The month folder has a digit at the front to keep it in order; otherwise, the months would be alphabetical.

Use Spark app

I regularly use the standard Gmail web app as my primary email client. But on the road, I use the Spark app to process my emails quickly. The functionality to swipe left or right to delete or move emails makes it quick to handle emails and leave my inbox free.

I often use this when committing or in a queue waiting. The ability to use the swipes means I can do this all one-handed.

Ultimately managing emails is about processing your inbox regularly. Hopefully, these tips will help you handle it quickly.