Tech Tips: Start the New Year with a clean inbox

• Clean out the clutter  

The easiest place to start when cleaning out our inbox is the junk folder. This is where all those spam emails come to die. The best and often most satisfying place to start is by going through these emails and deleting old, irrelevant, or outdated messages.  

• Get curious with your email settings  

The best way to manage your emails is by creating ‘rules’ for emails from a specific sender or with a specific subject line. For example, we create a rule for all emails from a particular client or project to go in one folder. The ‘rules’ process will then sort automatically the existing or new mails from your general mailbox to the specific folder assigned. Here is a step-by-step process explaining how to create rules. 

Additionally, you can separate your emails into categories – urgent and not-urgent. This helps to ensure you are having the most impact and dealing with important issues first. Start testing what works best for you and with rules you can stay organized. 

• Unsubscribe 

Chances are, your email inbox is a mix of important messages, shipping notices, bill alerts, newsletters you never read, and other easy-to-ignore missives. The cleanest way to get off a list is to use the built-in unsubscribe option. That link is generally buried at the bottom of the message, in tiny type or made to not even look like a link, all the better to keep you subscribed. 

• Empty the trash 

The next step is to actually go through your old emails, as in over a year and quickly sending irrelevant ones to the trash and if you find any important threads saving them to a file. Less is more, especially when it comes to email!