Tips for Getting through Your Emails Faster

Many people today struggle to keep up with the amount of emails they receive. When emails pile up like this, it gets increasingly hard to catch up on them as time goes on. Here are a few proven tips for getting through your emails faster.

Use Labels

Categorizing your messages is a great place to start when you want to improve your email productivity. Using labels allows you to sort your emails according to subject matter, importance, who sent them, and more. Once your messages are labeled, you can more easily work through them in an order that lets you address the most urgent messages first.

Keep It Short

Get in the habit of keeping your replies to emails as short as possible. A rule that many people find effective is keeping their replies to three sentences or fewer. This can take some dedication and a little practice, but once you get used to being more succinct in your replies, your email processing time will be greatly reduced.

Create Filters

Email filters allow you to direct emails from certain senders into predetermined folders. One of the main ways that people commonly use filters is to direct their personal and business-related emails into separate folders, though the applications are endless. Using filters helps you process emails faster in a similar way to using labels, as they help you to better compartmentalize your messages for more efficient reading and replying.

Check Only at Certain Times

Checking your email account too frequently is one of the main causes of email overload. While it may seem like checking your messages more often would help you get through them quicker, it’s actually much better to review your messages and reply to them only at specific times that you have set in your daily routine. The quality of your replies will also improve when you do this, as you’ll be less distracted and fully focused on the task at hand when you check your emails only at limited, set times.

Try any of these methods today and see what they can do for your email productivity. By keeping your replies short, utilizing labels and filters, and checking your email only at specific times, you’ll be able to process your messages quicker and create additional time that you can use on more important things.
How do you currently manage your emails? Add your own tips in the comments below and get a chance to have them featured here!