E-mail, a wonderful communication tool is also the greatest challenge to manage. Hundreds of mails pouring in from friends, forums, business associates, customers and subscribed newsletters and spam mail with enticing subject headers.

Just imagine reading even 50 mails a day. It would take two and half hours even if you just spend 3 minutes on an average per mail. Replying to five to six important mails a day would take another hour at 10 minutes a mail.

Spending up to 4 hours a day on mails may leave you with little time to do more important work. So how do you manage the clutter of mails?

Creating mail folders

The first thing on setting up a new mail account is to create folders for storing important mails. You can create folders such as personal mails, business mails, priority response, newsletters etc. This will help you sort the important, urgent and casual mails and prioritize your email activities.

Spam and bulk mails

Most mail programs have very strong spam filters and they are improving by the day. This automatically filters your mail to bulk folders based on key words and whether the mail address is in your address book among various other criteria. As a rule never read any bulk mail however enticing the subject heading may be. Just scan the headings to check whether any recognizable mail has been sent to the bulk mail folder and delete the rest ruthlessly. If you get into even opening a few mails your mail time management takes a toss for the worst.

Set up temporary mail boxes

Many users have temporary needs for receiving huge amount of mails. This could be due to inviting applications for a position, submitting to search engines and running a promo, ad campaign or site submissions to search engines etc. Set up a temporary mail address and delete the mailbox once the purpose is achieved. Most mail services now offer this service as regular feature.

Passwords

Forgetting the login and passwords are a major time waster for all mail users. Keep a separate folder for passwords and site sign ups so that you need not request the passwords every time you need to login to a site.

Email Access

Don't open your emails too frequently or use it as a time filler. There is phenomenon called entrainment, which to explain in simple terms is a feeling of speed and fast paced action provided by emails and net surfing and is a major source of addiction. This also gives you a feeling of having done a lot of work. Have a predefined time schedule for checking and replying to mails.

Unsubscribe

When you feel a service or newsletter is no longer required simply unsubscribe. You may subscribe again when the need is felt.

Finally, email is a very valuable tool. Not managed well you could have thousands of mails sitting in your mail box creating huge confusion and loss of valuable time. How well you manage it will decide how effective you will be in your communication and productivity.

R.G. Srinivasan is is a certified trainer and a management consultant. Check out his webpages at http://www.home-businessresources.blogspot.com