As some of you know, my professional life has become all about email.  This means that I often get asked what I believe are the best practices for avoiding email overload.

Here are some general rules that I use. (If you have good ones that I don’t have listed here, please comment and I will update this entry):

1. touch each email only once.  reply/file or read/file or forward/file. If you don’t intend to deal with the email try to avoid opening it. You will multiply your email processing time if you are finding, opening, reading,… finding, opening reading…
2. create a bookmark to send email.  don’t open your inbox to send an email, it just wastes time and energy.
3. send as little email as possible.  only reply when absolutely required.  every email you send causes others to send email back.  this is not a virtual cycle.
4. remember that you only have 18 working hours in a day (hopefully less). we all have more to do each day than we can accomplish.  Acknowledging this is the key to redemption.  Acknowledging this allows you to move on and do the stuff that has to get done now.

SaneBox, my new business, separates your email into importance groups: SaneTop (very important - ASAP), SaneBox (important - do soon), SaneLater, SaneBulk (stuff for reference).  Often I get asked what is the best way to use these new folders and here are some SaneBox empowered rules that I use:

1. create a bookmark for SaneBox.  Use this to process your mail (remember general rule #1).  Personally, I have made my Inbox into a SaneBox (an optional mode where my SaneLater and SaneBulk mail skips my Inbox) so I only need to bookmark my google Inbox.
2. stay out of your actual google Inbox.  every time you look at that mess, it is going to destroy your productivity.  Just the act of mentally scanning it, wastes time and energy. Unless your inbox is a SaneBox :-)
3. create a bookmark for SaneTop.  there are a lot of times that you have 5 minutes and that folder has your crucial envelopes.