August 12, 2006

How You Handle Your Email InBox: Tells About Your Personal Life and How Efficient Your Email Use Will Be

Jeffrey Zaslow writes in the 10 August 2006 issue of the Wall Street Journal, that how you handle your inbox is a reflection of who you are. How you handle your inbox is NOT only a reflection of WHO you are but also how efficient your email experience is I would add.

Keeping your inbox full and not neatly organized could mean you keep your life cluttered too. On the other hand emptying the inbox all the time could mean you are quick and could miss opportunities in life.

Then there are those who need to balance chatting with someone via email while trying to be polite vs giving the "no-response" brush-off to pesky emailers. Jeffrey writes Those who are too nice in other areas of their lives may be more likely to struggle with unwieldy inboxes, says Merlin Mann, creator of 43folders.com, a Web site about personal productivity. Polite people (or those who want to be liked) feel obliged to participate in ping-pong correspondences with chatty friends. They haven't the heart to give anyone the no-response brush-off. But Mr. Mann says such ruthlessness is necessary.

My tips for a bulging email box:

1. Respond quickly to email

2. Use folders to organize and store email

3. If you have thousands and thousands of emails in your box - you might have to simply delete all but the most recent 500, an expert quoted in the WSJ article said. Personally, I'd look at every one in case there's a golden opportunity inside.

4. If you have a lot of email, sort it by sender, you can go through it faster.

5. I hilight email that is very important and has a deadline

6. I know many people who keep all their email box in their inbox. NO. When you act on an email move it to a folder.

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