Top 10 Email Productivity Tips

Getting too many emails? Afraid you’ll miss that big deadline looming around the corner that your boss has implied could cost you your job? Here’s a quick fix: set up an automated reply to incoming messages! This feature is often used by people to notify their contacts when they’ll be back in the office and who to contact during that time in case of emergency. But an AutoReply can also be used to let the people emailing you know that you won’t be able to get back to them within a certain amount of time. That way you can focus on the task at hand and not miss a beat – and keep your job!

We get it: sometimes, it’s just faster and easier to email a bunch of people the same info all at once. Whether it’s an invitation to someone’s Dirty 30 birthday bash or a memo about the next HR meeting, mass emails will surely flood your inbox from time to time. Want to reply to them quickly and efficiently? Set youremail default to “reply all” – that way you can make sure everyone knows what they need to know immediately and you don't risk sending your reply email to a single person when you intended to reply to everyone. On the other hand, if you continuously email just certain people, you should set your email default to just “reply” – so you won’t be bothering others and you’ll saving yourself loads of precious time!

If you start writing an email but you press the ‘send’ button before you’re done or you don’t fill in the “To:” field properly, can it still be called an email? In order to avoid sending unfinished emails, you should always fill out the “To:” field last. Why? So that you don’t accidentally hit “send” while composing an email and end up transmitting to your recipient something that’s only half finished, filled with grammar mistakes or riddled with incorrect information. Haven’t yet been able to turn this into a habit? Have no fear; if you’re a Gmail user, you can always use the “Undo Send” option, which cancels the sending of your email within a certain period of time. Just make sure you’ve activated the feature in your settings beforehand!

Some of us can’t stand having un-read emails in our inboxes, so this is already a given for us. But others just can’t seem to find the time to go through anything and everything that comes his or her way and still manage to have an actual life. But that’s what this list is for! Finishing every day with “0” unreademails in your inbox might seem like a lofty goal at first, so why not start things slowly - by going through the most important emails and clearing out and deleting the less important ones through proper time management? That way you can leave work on Friday with less to worry about and start the next week fresh. And once you’ve got that down, you can work your way towards the daily zero inbox goal!

What do you do when someone sends you an email that you have to, or want to, respond to, but you don’t currently have time to devote all the attention it deserves? Send a quick reply to your contact, acknowledging receipt of his or her message, and then flag – or “star” if you’re a Gmail user – the email, for future review. That way you haven’t left the person hanging and you have a digital record of what’s next on your email “To Do” list. And, we’ve gotta admit, it’s pretty satisfying to un-flag - or un-star - that email once you’ve done what you’ve needed to do!

We know, we know: sometimes, it just seems easier to read an email and then move on to the next without responding to any of them immediately. But, believe it or not, this isn’t always the most effective method to get through everything that’s in your inbox. Some emails just require immediate attention, so sometimes you’re better off doing what you need to do as soon as you open them. That’s the one-click rule: after you’ve read one, reply, forward, delete or archive (as in flag or star it, as mentioned in entry #6) the email right away. That means you’ve dealt with it and can get on with the rest of your day!

Alright, so you’ve been going back and forth in an email thread with a client, your boss, or a sibling for minutes, or even hours of your day. You THINK this is actually helping you, because it’s letting you multi-task, check other emails and do other work at the same time. But that’s not always the case; these lengthy convo threads might actually be slowing you down! What can you do about it? Make it easier for your recipient to instantly get the message you’re communicating to him or her by cleaning up the thread: reply by bringing the key info up to the top of the email you send so that everything he or she needs to know is front and center!

Two years ago, you signed up for a free $500 credit from that online casino. And now, its rewards VIP Program keeps spamming you every other day. You couldn’t care less about its competitive promotions and the chance to accumulate loyalty points in any of their partner casinos – all you wanted was a chance to win as much money as you could within an hour! And that’s probably not the only marketing list you inadvertently subscribed to. In order to reclaim ownership of your inbox, unsubscribe from all the email lists that don’t offer you or your business solid value anymore. You can either take the time to individually remove all bulk emails, newsletters and status updates, or you can use an email management service like unroll.me that’ll do the job for you in just one-click! If you’re not ready to let go of everything just yet though, you can also “rollup” the subscriptions you like and get them all in one email!

Though this one’s pretty much self-explanatory, we’ll take the time to spell it out for you: limit the length of your emails! You don’t need to write novel-length messages to your contacts, and especially not to your colleagues or your higher-ups – first of all, that’d take up too much of your time and second of all, it’s highly likely your recipient will be all TL;DR – or Too Long; Didn’t Read – about it anyway! Try to summarize what you need to tell the person by communicating the info in bullet-point format. If that’s not your thing, then condense everything into 3 sentences or less. And if really you can’t do either of those, then call him or her!

Here we are at our number one tip. All emails are created equal, but some emails are more equal than others. You probably don’t want every single emaillanding in your inbox with the same level of priority. Any reputable email service will have options for filtering emails and it's just a matter of going into your settings to find out how to best apply them. As such, it’s helpful to create such filters so that each email message is labeled accordingly - and in some cases, sent to corresponding folders automatically or skip the inbox entirely, helping you to prioritize and focus on the most important emails. This makes your inbox far more manageable and clutter-free, leaving you to be more productive throughout your days, weeks, and months – and it works whether you use email for work or for play!

Do you agree with our list? What do you think is the most important tip for remaining productive when it comes to email? For more informative top 10s published every day, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.