by Heshan Karunarathne

Managing the email messages we receive on a daily basis, is a growing challenge to most of us. No one’s volume is diminishing. If you are in the small minority of people currently able to maintain less than a screen-full of emails most of the time, your system is probably fine as-is. If you regularly have many more than that (hundreds, thousands?) residing in your email in-box, you’re subjected to stress and numbness in today’s fast paced digital communication world.

Because of the volume of discrete messages and the speed with which they show up, email seems to be a unique demon, with a life of its own. In essence, however, email is no different than a desktop in-basket or an answering machine – it’s simply a collection box for incoming communication and information that needs to be assessed, processed, and organized as appropriate. And controlling email involves the same challenge as managing your physical in-basket – often too much stuff that we don’t have the time or inclination to process and organize as it comes in. So it easily becomes a swamp of “staged” or “pending” items – glanced at, perhaps even read, but not decided about or effectively organized

Learning how to get the most organization from your email software is very likely the most important skill you can learn to conduct a successful online business/ career. In order to get the most from your email software, there are three key processes that you should learn. These processes are concerned with data organization, saving time and email database management.

SET UP EMAIL FOLDERS

Proper arrangement is the key to any emails that you intend to save. Having thousands of emails in one folder is sure to lead you to confusion and lost communications and information. Fortunately, the primary email browsers make it easy to organize your information. By allowing you to create folders within your email software, you can file specific emails into folders dedicated to the topic of the email. You are the best judge as to how to organize your email into topics that provide an easy method of retrieval of the information when you need it most.

FILTERING EMAIL

Email filters are a tool to help you save time and frustration. With filters, you can direct the important email or not-so-important email into certain pre-ordained folders. As part of the war against spam, most ISP’s use filters every day in an attempt to keep the spam out of your mailbox. In fact, filters can be used to sort incoming mail trying to catch the spam which ISP missed. Setting up filters is actually quite easy.

CLEANING AND COMPRESSING YOUR MAIL DATA

This is another important part of your email management. When you no longer need an email, it should be deleted. When you first delete an email, your software will send the email to the Trash Bin. Your email is not actually deleted until you empty your trash bin. Emptying your trash bin compresses the mailboxes from where the email was originally filed. This is absolutely very important to the protection of your email data.

Even after you have emptied your trash, Compressing Folders is a recommended step to prevent other data corruption. Once you understand that an email does not actually move from one folder to another until the folder is compressed, then you can better appreciate this advice.

The 4Ds Model - Decide what to do with each and every message

The "Four D's for Decision Making" model (4 D's) is a valuable tool for processing e-mail, helping you to quickly decide what action to take with each item and how to remove it from the Inbox. Some of those messages are getting lots of attention but very little action. Under the 4 D's model, you have four choices:

Delete it

Do it

Delegate it

Defer it

If you use a large percentage of what you keep, then what you're doing is working. But many of you are keeping a lot more than you need. Here are some questions to ask yourself to help you decide what to delete:

Does the message relate to a meaningful objective you're currently working on? If not, you can probably delete it. Why hang on to information that doesn't relate to your main focus?

Does the message contain information you can find elsewhere? If so, delete it.

Does the message contain information that you will refer to within the next six months? If not, delete it.

Does the message contain information that you're required to keep? If not, delete it.

As an example, when Email A comes into your main Inbox, the data connected to Email A appears in two files. One file contains the header and body of the email. The other file contains only the email header information. When an email is moved from one folder to the other, only the header information is actually moved. The body information will not be deleted from the original folder until which time the original folder is compressed.

This explains the purpose of emptying the trash AND compressing folders. If the email was simply moved from the Inbox to another folder, then emptying the trash is not enough. The original placement of the email is not actually removed from the file that contains the body information until the message has been designated for compression.

Protecting your email data on a regular basis is good practice for avoiding disaster in your mailbox. So many of us rely upon our email software to keep our online business running smoothly. Once you master the tools provided in your email software, your online business will run smoothly also.

Email, like any powerful tool, can be a blessing or a curse. And if the tool goes with the job, you need to invest in whatever it takes to use quite wisely and safely. It is a huge productivity enhancer, but when it gets away from you, it’s a severe occupational hazard.

(Source: Internet)