Many people often ask me how I manage my emails. Even though I receive a lot of emails a week, I spend less than two minutes managing my mail every day. (This doesn’t include the time taken to type the responses of course, though I keep the time I spend typing emails short as well.)
A big part of that is email filters. In the video above, I share three simple tips to achieve inbox zero using gmail filters. While the tutorial pertains to gmail filters, you can accomplish the same with the filters in other email clients like Lotus and Outlook.
If you like this tutorial, you’ll enjoy these too:
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More tips on how to manage your emails: How To Spend Less Time on Emails. Don’t miss too: The 8 Habits of Highly Productive People
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“This video is private.”
Haha, I guess now we know who actually watches the videos, or at least bothers to comment. :p Thanks for letting me know Matt, I’ve fixed it. Actually I set it as private because I wanted the video and the post to go up together, and it happened that I was in the hospital for a dental emergency this morning and wasn’t able to switch the status of the video when the post went live. But it’s all fixed now. :)
A dental emergency at the hospital doesn’t sound fun at all. I assume it was related to your wisdom teeth. I hope everything went well.
I’m sure a lot of people begin each workday by spending a couple hours tackling their inbox. Creating these filters will make all the incoming emails seem less daunting and be easier to handle.
I don’t get many emails. I have unsubscribed to most newsletters and whenever I get messages I don’t want I use the ready made spam button in Gmail. I will probably see more emails coming in over the course of this year as I grow an online business though and I will be sure to come back to the tips you shared here to manage my messages more efficiently.
If I could share one unrelated Gmail tip with everyone it would be Gmail Offline. It an app available for Chrome and lets you read and draft emails when you may not have access to the internet. I just discovered it and I like it a lot.
Hey Matt! No funnily it had nothing to do with my wisdom teeth, though I did have my last two extracted last week. It is indeed bizarre that I would have two totally different dental work done in a span of one week.
Yes, everything went well, though the downside is that I need to cut short my upcoming trip to South Africa to return for part two of my procedure. But I’m glad and very grateful that the issue (acute pain) has been resolved. Funnily, the dentist was listening to Kiss92 as she was doing the procedure. I thought it would have been funny if it was a Friday (I currently have a prerecorded work-life balance series running with Kiss every Friday for 4 weeks) and she was listening to someone with the same name and same voice as her patient on radio while doing dental work for the patient herself.
I didn’t know about Gmail offline. I don’t think I have much use for it as I’m pretty much connected 24/7; here’s the link to those who may find it useful though: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gmail-offline/ejidjjhkpiempkbhmpbfngldlkglhimk?hl=en
This was very helpful… thank you so much!
Aw glad you found it useful Dawn! :)
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I have been buried in a flood of emails for years. I applied about 5 filters and my email is suddenly set up in a manner that I can live with! And I only watched the first tip so far. Keep up the greatness.
Cathy :dance:
That’s so awesome Cathy! :D I’m glad you found these simple tips useful. The intention of this tutorial is to let people know that just applying a few simple tips can change their entire inbox.
Thanks a lot Celes, after the passive income course, I was trying to figure out how to filter incoming emails even after sending them to junk mail, they still come into my inbox. I am using Entourage (Macbook user). Hope to be able to use your tutorial to effectively stop these tons of emails into my inbox. Your tutorial is very clear and at a very good pace too. Thumbs up, Cheers!
Have a great trip!
:heart: :clap:
Thanks Dolly! :) I was really amazed when you shared that you have over hundreds of unread mail in your inbox during the Passive Income course (especially since I’m someone who takes every email very seriously), so I thought I should create a tutorial like this for the readers who face similar predicaments! I’m so glad you find this tutorial clear and useful. :D Let me know if you have any questions about it and I’ll be happy to help!
Hi Celes, very useful video. I am regular reader of your blog since last 8 months… Your posts are really life changing. Thanks for this great work. :)
Aw thank you Rahul. :) Do apply the tips and let me know what you think!
Great post Celes,
I narrowed my 3,000 plus emails down recently to 50 in the inbox, I am going implement these tips. Thank you
3,000!!! That’s insane. I hope these tips help you to narrow down those 50 emails further and make inbox zero a daily possibility. Feel free to share tips of how you narrowed down from those 3,000 emails too, Bob! Unsubscribing from unimportant newsletters (Tip #11 of Effective Email Management Tips) is definitely a big one for me.
Great post!
Email filters is really where everyone needs to start. I use unrollme and sanebox to that end but also do filters manually as well for certain emails that just don’t need to ever get my attention at all (but do need to be in my archives).
Cheers,
Brad
thanks alot…
it was very very helpful to relieve my headache with different ails and manage my time effectively…:)
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