9 Ways to Master Your Inbox

Is e-mail driving you mad? Much as we love the ease and effectiveness of electronic communications, your inbox can often be overwhelming.

As a Web worker, I'm especially prone to feeling buried by my e-mail. But I've come up with 9 ways to keep my inbox at bay. Try them and see if they work for you.

1. Don't check (or answer) your e-mail first thing in the morning. Spend the first hour at your desk checking your to-do list, working on any urgent tasks, and mapping out your workday. Otherwise, you'll get sucked into the e-mail quicksand and your productivity will suffer.
2. Batch your e-mail time. Instead of checking e-mail every few minutes throughout the day, set aside 15 minutes every hour to read and respond to e-mail. The first shift of the day should be for the code-red e-mails and could take 30 minutes. Thereafter, cut yourself off after 15 minutes and get back to actual work.
3. Triage your inbox. When you check your mail, flag the most important items, then tackle them one by one. Leave the other e-mail for your next check.
4. Turn off your alerts, both auditory and visual.
5. When you open an e-mail, act on it immediately: reply, file it, or delete it. If next steps are required, add them to your task list; don't let the message linger in your inbox as a reminder.
6. Don't move items from a folder back to your inbox (or just leave items sitting there) as a pseudo to-do list. Write the actions on your task list instead.
7. Use your rules. I automatically route my newsletters and alerts into their own folders, so they don't clutter my inbox. I can read them at my leisure later, and they don't contribute to visual overload.
8. Create a contingency plan. If you're like me, it's hard to ignore e-mail for 45 minutes (or more) at a time. What if something really urgent has come up? My solution is to let people know if they need an immediate response, they need to call me.
9. Try to end the day with an empty inbox.