A growing trend is that every January, workers declare an email bankruptcy. This could help save you time, but only if you keep on top of your email.
In 1999, some poor soul somewhere in the Internet climbed out from under mountains of email and, upon seeing the clear blue sky, was the first to declare email bankruptcy. This is when you wipe out your entire email account — or accounts. You only send an email of explanation to friends and family explaining what you did and to forgive in advance any slow responses for the next couple of months. This is all for personal email accounts — not for business. This is a practical solution for a lot of people with email stress, but not to be relied on year after year. You need to manage your email (and thus, your email stress) so it doesn’t take up more time than it needs to.
Update Your Spam Filter
If you don’t have a spam filter, get one. They can often be downloaded for free. If you already have a spam filter, then you can help avoid email stress by having it regularly updated. Always try to have the latest version possible of your particular spam filter. In this way, you can get the latest defenses against the evil spammers of the virtual world. Even just identifying and deleting spam from your email accounts takes up a surprising amount of time. When you have more time to get what you need to done, that gives you less stress.
Be Ruthless
It’s great to get things like survey invitations, daily jokes, sales alerts and bulletins sent to your inbox. But how much time does this stuff take up? You only have so many hours in your day. Unless it’s essential, get rid of all non-business related stuff that takes up not only a good part of your inbox, but a good part of your day. Unsubscribe to everything that you can. If you can’t see how to unsubscribe, then some spam filters will let you add that address to their "spam" list.
Send A Mailing To Friends And Family
Let your friends and family who keep emailing you jokes, inspirational sayings and coupons that you have email stress and can’t take those kinds of emails anymore. Be polite. Say you love hearing from them, but unless it is news from them (not a repeat of something else), you are forced to delete it because of work pressures. Most people will understand.
Set Time Limits (And Keep Them)
Don’t let email take up more than one hour of your day if you are under email stress or any other kind of stress. You can do it all at once, or set up four fifteen minute intervals throughout your day. Don’t keep going back and checking the email. Turn off the "You’ve Got Mail" voice. Once the hour is up, no more email until tomorrow. This is easier said than done, but each day you practice at this, the easier it will get.
Hope this helps you with your email stress.
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