How many e-mails are currently in your in-box? I know individuals who keep hundreds of items in their inbox. YIKES! Just writing this amount overwhelms me. I realize that some people do not check e-mail often, but there are ways to manage your inbox to keep that overwhelmed feeling at bay.

As an owner of about ten e-mail accounts, I check each one at least once a week. My personal e-mail gets checked more frequently, numerous times a day. In my personal account, I currently have 6 read e-mail and 0 unread e-mails. My junk e-mail account (used for purchasing merchandise and registering for promotions, free items, coupons, etc.) has 4 read e-mails and 57 unread e-mails. Most of these items are . . . well . . . junk, but I still scan through to catch the information I may need.

Though there are a number of ways to manage your inbox, I follow the same 4-steps for each of my accounts.

STEP ONE:

Delete unnecessary items.

I immediately delete any item I don’t need, including advertisements, store announcements, savings/clearance notices of stores I am not planning to visit within the next month, etc. I also usually delete the “FWD: FWD:” messages. These are usually sent from well-meaning friends and family with tips, virus alerts, funny stories, etc. If I have the time and know the sender, I MAY read the message. However, in an effort to save time, I usually delete these items.

Deleting items can be done quickly. I deal with the 10 or so messages I can see at one time on my screen. I will click on the box to the left-hand side of any messages that need to be deleted. As I click in the box, the message will be highlighted. I will highlight all unwanted messages which could be anywhere from 4 to 10 of those messages. Then I click the DELETE button which is next to the REPLY button on the title bar. All those highlighted messages have now been moved to the TRASH. The next set of messages now moves up and I repeat this process until I have touched all unwanted messages. This process takes me between 5-10 minutes. I am then left with the messages I need to read.

Stay tuned next week for STEP TWO on how I manage my inbox. Do you have a quick and efficient way to weed through your list of messages? If so, please leave a comment with your tips.