During this time of uncertainty, your job, your classes, and pretty much all of your life is being hosted online. This means that you are having to facilitate all of these activities from your home, and your primary communication for most of these is your email. With 20 or more emails coming in a day sometimes, we know that you are feeling overwhelmed and it is hard to know where to begin with organizing them. Below are some tips on how we handle our email and we hope this may help you, too.
Flagging/Starring Important Emails
When an important email pops up on your notifications and you do not have time to attend to it immediately, open the email and flag or star it. This way, when you are available to check your email and respond to them accordingly, you know immediately which ones you need to for sure attend to. By doing this, you do not have to feel as though you have to keep pausing your task to read and respond to emails. Instead, you can remain focused and working efficiently on whatever school or work task is requiring your attention.
Organizing Emails Into Folders/Labels
Similar to flagging or starring your important emails, you can also consider organizing your emails into specific folders/labels. I’m not sure about you all, but I know that I often need to reference back to an email that I had received maybe a few weeks ago. Filing or labeling your emails into specific folders will help you to more quickly and easily find the email you are in search of. Additionally, if you are needing to view several emails all pertaining to your Public Speaking class for example, you can simply open your Public Speaking folder or search the label name and scroll through only the relevant emails to find what you are looking for. To learn how to apply and use the labels (very similar to a folder, except you can add several labels to one email) in Gmail, watch this video from GCF Global at starting at 1:21.
Unsubscribing Unwanted Emails
Have you made an account for a website and now you’re finding that for some reason you are getting an email a day from them with information that you have absolutely no interest in? I know that I have, and it makes me not even want to open my email because I know that I will have at least five emails that are just taking up space in my inbox. To help free up space and to stay motivated to continue checking your email, look to the right of the sender’s email and click “Unsubscribe”. This may also appear at the very end of the email, so if you do not see it right at the top, the very bottom would be the other location you could find it. Remember, unsubscribing from a website’s emails does not mean that you are terminating your account with them.
Designating Times to Check Email
If possible, try not to leave your email open in a tab all day as you are working on your device. This will only cause you to continue feeling like you need to constantly be checking it whenever you receive an email. Instead, designate specific times in the day to check it. Our suggestion would be to check it no more than three times a day, and at least once in the morning and once in the evening. By having specific times to check it, you ensure that you will actually be productive in organizing your emails and making sure that you do respond when necessary.
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