The Easy Way to Deal With Email and Keep Your Inbox Empty

It's surprising (to me, anyway) how many people suffer from over-stuffed inboxes and don't know what to do about it.

So I thought it's about time I shared with you what you can do. So here is an easy solution.

First of all, open your inbox and view the messages as "from" instead of "date" which is the default way messages are displayed in your inbox. This will group together all the messages from each sender.

Then go through them all and delete all the messages you don't need. This is easy because you can simply highlight all the messages from each sender and deleted them all at once.

Next go through the messages you chose not to delete and do one of the following four things with each one:

• Deal with it
• File it
• Pass it on
• Trash

Deal with it: If you have an email that requires a response from you, deal with it. It will probably only take you a couple of minutes.

File it: You probably have several different email folders where you store messages. I have a different one for each hosting company, friends, companies I deal with, etc. So if it's a message you want to keep, move it to the appropriate email folder or a folder on your hard drive.

Pass it on: If it's an email that someone else needs to deal with, forward it on to them and then move the email to trash. For example, I pass on emails that my book keeper or accountant needs to deal with.

Trash: This is where you place all the emails you don't need. Even if at first you thought you needed to keep it and if, on reflection, you don't need it, then move it to the trash folder.

One caveat I will mention is that once you've dealt with everything in your inbox, keep the emails you sent to trash for at least a month or two before you empty your trash folder, just in case you've trashed something by mistake.

And then every day when you check your emails, make the four choices immediately of how to deal with them.

I have my email set for manual checking and I don't check emails on my phone. That way I'm not distracted my unexpected emails popping up all the time. I dedicate certain times of the day for checking email and deal with them at that time.

I currently only have 4 email in my inbox and they're only there because the time to deal with them hasn't arrived yet, but it will soon and then I can delete them for good.

And my inbox will be empty once more.

Happy sigh...