I've got an confession to make.... wait for it... I let my inbox get submerged. In fact before I went on holiday my inbox started to get deluged, and I couldn't find the important e-mails, let alone have the energy to find them. In fact, it was all a bit of a disaster for someone who happens to be the Chief Coach at The Efficiency Coach. Not quite 'on brand' is it....

The question is, how did I stop my inbox jamming up again?

Very simply, procrastinating on an over-flowing inbox just makes it worse, the problem doesn't go away, however hard you try. And believe me, I was wishing really really hard that they would all go away... As I looked through the e-mail (sort it by person) I realised that newsletters and forum updates were jamming up my inbox and hiding the important e-mails from both clients and potential clients.

I now have a very strict newsletter policy in place. If I have not given my permission to subscribe, I will unsubscribe and report as spam. If I have subscribed, I have set up a folder where all my newsletters go into. I then read them when I want some down time.

I've also put all the forum replies and updates which were jamming up my inbox into their very own folder & they are now sent automatically into this folder. Once again, I now read them when I want some down time. I was finding that social media was taking over my life and inbox in a bad way...

I've set up five TO DO folders, and sort all the new e-mail into these folders, and then allocate time to deal with each of the folders in turn. If the e-mail requires urgent action it gets red flagged to help me prioritise it.

These simple three actions have quickly removed all the clutter from my inbox, and I am now finding it easy to stay on top of the 50 or so new e-mails which plop into the box every single day.