1035

By Marca

That is the number I found staring back at me last week when I opened my yahoo account, an email account that I use for all my bills and memberships. It was scary. The worst part about it is the good stuff, the important emails, gets swallowed up by the junk and it is hard to separate the two. So, I went on a quest to find some yahoo mail solutions. Surely, there is a secret code to unlocking the wonders of an empty inbox. What I found were hundreds of articles that were lengthy and cumbersome on the art and science of an empty email box. Overrated.

I don't have time for complicated fixes to my 1035 emails. I need permanent, time saving and practical.

I went back to my trusty green book (Organize Now). After looking at her sound advice and looking at my mess, my needs, and my likely behavior I came up with a simple plan:

~Spam it!
~Delete it!
~Archive it/File it!
~Respond immediately (if I have the time and it will take less than a couple of minutes)
~Star it (if I need to respond and don't have time at the moment)
~Group it!  A lot of the mail filling my box is from my endless groups I am a part of. I changed my settings for each group to a one email a day update on the threads rather than receiving each email on the thread. Summaries cut down my email by half! Did you catch that? HALF! It is worthwhile.

Another tip to getting the chaos under wraps:  I did a search for a particular common junk mail source in my inbox.  It popped up with over 200.  I clicked the choose all  button and then deleted the whole lot and place them on spam notice.

This really took off the time it was taking me to get through those emails.

Now, I know what you are thinking.  That 1035 must've been 3 months of email neglect.  Nope.  One week.  One week.  That is out of control.  SPAM IT!  Get removed from those email lists and then don't be afraid to open your email box.  I am happy to report my box is pretty clear these days.