Ten Key Strategies from : Taming the E-mail Beast:  45 Key Strategies for Better Managing Your E-mail Overload (and Regaining Your E-mail Sanity!)

1. Make sure one of your e-mail accounts is designated for “work-only” e-mails (have a second account for all of those hilarious e-mails, photos, and videos you receive from your family and friends!)
2. If the task inside your e-mail takes three minutes or less to get done right now, DO IT NOW!  Don’t let those e-mails stack up (thanks David Allen!)
3. Don’t be a “Blinger”!  Check your e-mail account only a few times per day, not a few times per hour!  (Did you know blinging actually temporarily decreases your IQ?)
4. Build a smart and efficient filing system within your e-mail software for all of your archival e-mails.  You want to make it easy to quickly file or delete messages from your inbox once you have completed their tasks.
5. Give yourself a “maximum number” of e-mails that you’ll allow your professional account to reach.  Once it gets to that number, your e-mail immediately becomes “Priority #1” until you get it back to a more sane level.
6. End the “FYI/Just thought you’d want to know” e-mails.  Chances are your co-workers are so swamped with their own e-mail problems, they aren’t reading those anyway. 
7. When forwarding or replying to messages where the subject of the message changes, make sure to change the actual subject line, so all receivers know something new is on their plate.
8. Stop the insanity of unproductive “e-mail loops”.  If you are trading e-mails back and forth with someone – with an obvious miscommunication or misunderstanding taking place – go find the person and talk it through.  This saves time vs. “e-mail ping pong”!
9. When out of the office, consider replying to e-mail messages received on your PDA or Smartphone by voice rather than by text – you can typically talk 5-10 times faster than you can type.  (And if you are really smart, you’ll call them when you know they are away from their desk – you can reply really fast when you catch their voice mail!)
10.  Become ruthless at identifying and deleting junk and spam e-mails, including all of those really cheap offers for sexual enhancement pills and winning numbers in the Kenyan Lottery.  Then, use the “Shift-Delete” keystroke combination on your PC-based commercial e-mail software to knock those messages right by your “deleted items” folder and out of your account completely.

These are only 10 of the more than 45 great strategies and ideas you’ll get from purchasing Taming the E-mail Beast. 

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