Quick Notes ~ Flooded with Email? 7 Easy Ways to Turn Down the Spigot

Drowning in incoming email?

These days, instruction-based marketing delivers quality content to our inboxes in droves, but trying to drink from the fire hose spewing virtual information can stop you in your tracks and even knock you down. With water everywhere, you can still die of thirst. 

With the hose aimed straight at you, it's hard to reach the faucet, let alone turn it down, but making the effort will yield results. You can follow my Email Blitz and manage your email account, but you can't hyper-focus on email forever. To truly free yourself, turn down the fire hose:

Pick one newsletter, ezine, blog or other regularly emailed item to unsubscribe from per day until you've reduced your load to those items you actually read. No havering here: you either read it or you don't. Just wanting to read something doesn't mean you will. If you don't have time now, you probably won't have time in the future.
Now, change any settings for online accounts that send you unneeded emails or duplicated information. Examples include Facebook friend requests, comments to forum posts and notifications that your friends have updated their page. Instead, set up a schedule right in a calendar program that lets you enter repeating events with one reminder email. That way you'll know when it's time to visit virtual library sites, forums and groups without having to check a calendar, and you won't need all those separate emails to remind you.
Politely asks anyone who regularly forwards emails they enjoy to you. Tell them that, while it's sweet of them to think of you, time constraints prevent you from opening these types of emails from anyone.
If you have a problem unsubscribing to any regularly emailed item or if an offender won't stop forwarding "fun" emails, don't waste time sorting out confusing software and more confusing people. Just set up a filter in your email account that will direct all such emails straight to the trash without your ever having to see them.
If you receive something by email you always print and read, see if there's a paper copy available free, instead.
Change the settings of all your groups so you can read and respond to posts on the Web. Often you can subscribe to group and forum feeds that will deliver posts right into an online feed reader. The quickest way to discover to existence of a feed is by looking in the address bar where you type the site URL. You will see a red-and-white feed symbol if a feed is present, like the ones, below. Click it to add this feed to your reader. If there is no feed symbol, cut and paste the URL and then add it as a feed in Google Reader (see tutorial). Google Reader will attempt to notify you of updates to the URL address you input.
If your incoming emails still flood you, go back through steps 1-6 as many times as you need to until you've reduced your load to a manageable level. Be wary of giving out your email address to any but sites you trust.

Be bull-headed. Take charge. Remember, email is your tool, not the other way around. Let only the information you need to drink in through that hose.

© 2010 Janalyn Voigt

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