How to sort your email out once and for all

How to sort your email out once and for all

Your inbox is probably as overloaded as this. (Image: Flickr user Mr Thinktank.)

Is the end of email in sight? Er, no, not if current research from Mesmo is anything to go by. It has found that 46% of business users receive a new email every nine minutes. No wonder it's hard to keep on top of your incoming email.

To try and tackle this scourge of modern business life, Mesmo is running its annual Clean Out Your Inbox week. Starting today, you can join forces with Dr Monica Seeley of Mesmo and Marsha Egan of InboxDetox to get on top of your email for 2013.

Daily email tactics

Every day this week, you can view tips and hints to help you and your business take control of your bulging, time-wasting inbox.

Each day covers a different tactic to conquer your email, and there are prizes for the people who manage to downsize their inboxes the most.

To learn more, hop on over to the Mesmo blog where you'll find an outline of the week's activities and instructions explaining how to get involved.

Tools can help too

If you're grappling with an inbox full of email newsletters, you might also want to check out Unroll.me, a clever tool that can combines all your email subscriptions into a single 'rollup'. We covered it a couple of weeks back.

However, if you decide to use this - or other tools - to sort out your inbox, do take note of Monica's advice: "Using software is an option but it is rather like prescribing a drug when you know only the symptoms of the illness and not what is the real illness."

In other words, it's no good applying the sticking plaster of an inbox tool without addressing the cause of your email overload too.

• Three tools to help you declutter for 2013
• Choose the right type of business email system
• Streamline your email and save time