5 quick tips to stay on top of your email

Executing on Plans / May 3, 2013 / lbenetton

So many email inboxes overflow with… stuff. Some of it is important. Some of it isn’t. And some of it, dating from two weeks ago, reminds you of an appointment you need to attend tomorrow. Oops!

We hope this doesn’t sound like your inbox, but if it does, we suggest you get control of it. And when we write “get control of” your inbox, what we mean is “empty” your inbox.

The first step in emptying your inbox is to understand what each message actually contains. Step Two: put that information in the right place.

Consider these five common types of information you need to handle.

Contacts

Ever thought it might be a good idea to copy contact information from somebody’s email signature into your contact database? So did we. Creating a contact card for all your important contacts makes it easy to, well, contact them when you need to.

That’s why we put a contact creation tool inside Daylite Mail Assistant. Just click the suggested contact in DMA, type the information into the popup dialog, and you’re done!

Here’s a quick demo:

Calendar appointments

We were kidding about almost missing an appointment. That never happens. We know. That’s because you use appointment information from your emails to create entries in your calendar. Right?

DMA lets you create calendar events using the “+” sign to the right of “Events” with all the ease of creating contacts. Remember to invite people who need to be involved in this event, and set a reminder for yourself, all from the popup dialog.

Tasks

If something in an email doesn’t need to occur at a specific time, put it on your task list for the day you need to do it and not in your calendar.

Creating a task from DMA is almost like creating a calendar appointment – just click the Tasks “+” instead of the Events one.

Stuff to file

Need to keep emails on file? Get them out of your inbox and into a dedicated folder, even if you do import them into Daylite using DMA.

Junk

This may seem too obvious to mention, but it’s worth keeping in mind: the Delete key is a wonderful tool for reducing stress. Use it freely on junk emails or messages you don’t need to read, file or act upon.

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