Help, I'm Drowning In A Flood Of Email! Save Me…

Email Overwhelm…

I used to have so many inboxes and email that I just didn't know if I was coming or going. My inbox was overflowing and I was missing important emails because of it. Frustrated, overworked, stressed out and overwhelm were all regular emotions for me…

Was I supposed to leave messages unread or read if I had to take action on that email? Where was I supposed to file my emails for reference, and how was I supposed to manage this much JUNK?

Email was dominating my life. Every 2 mins I'd go and check it. "Oh, I wonder if I've got a new email, let me check" I didn't actually realise it was costing me a lot of time and was switching my focus away from what I was working on.

I was an email slave.

Then one day, salvation came… I found a solution. (Well, it actually took me 6-12 months to learn how to implement it all, but it was worth it)

David Allen, Getting things done and the Zero Inbox saved me. Finally I was able to take control of my email, and ultimately my life. No longer was I a slave to the electronic message.

1. How To Take Control Of Your Inbox

Video 1 – I show you how I manage my email inbox and how you can do the same. Use the same workflow that most highly productive people use and breeze through your emails in a FLASH.

2. Creating Power Labels

Labels are very powerful. The 3 main ones I have are:

@Action
@ActionLTO
@ActionMLM

The reason I use the @ symbol is that it makes that label appear at the top of my labels rather than half way down because symbols appear higher than numbers. You could also call it 1-Action if you wanted to.

Remember, you will want to put all the items you need to do into your @Action label. My @Action is for tasks I need to do for my personal life. My @ActionMLM is for all MLM related tasks and email's to reply to.

I also use a to-do list/planner which I won't discuss in this post, but will do in the future.

My other labels are R/label – The R/ Stands for reference, and to be honest, whilst I have about 50 labels to file my emails into… you actually only need R/Reference. 1 (one) label and put all your reference material in it. Gmail has a fantastic search facility which can find pretty much every email you ever received if you search for it by keyword.

Video 2 – Here is how I create labels in Gmail and control my email to avoid overwhelm.

3. Filter Out Unwanted Email (Trash!)

Filtering your emails is very important. I am subscribed to hundreds of newsletters and I have a LOT of email coming in. I like to be able to filter it and send some of it to specific labels so I never actually see it in my inbox and once per week I can go and skim through all the newsletters and pick out something to read.

Video 3 – Here I show you how I filter out unwanted email in Gmail, which allows me to keep my inbox relatively clear. This is very powerful and if you don't use it, then you must.

4. Directing All Emails Into One Inbox (Streamline)

I must have about 10 different email addresses and I used to struggle managing them all. I would have to go to multiple places/ logins to read my different email. I'd have 3 gmail accounts, several website emails, my Facebook, Social networking, Better Networker emails + others and it was taking up a major part of my day.

Whilst I thought I was being productive, I was actually very unproductive. Never achieving anything, and always replying to email.

So, I wanted to show you how I bring all my emails into one place…

Video 4 – If you've got multiple email addresses, and multiple inboxes then here is how to import your other gmail accounts, and website emails into your main email address.

There are many email clients. Outlook Express, Outlook, Yahoo, Hotmail etc… but I chose Gmail because I could have the one Google account and have everything running through it.

I'd be interested in your thoughts on how you manage your email. Which client do you use and which methods do you employ?

If you like this post and can see the value of it for you, your team and Facebook friends etc. Please hit the share button's at the top of the post and share it on Facebook for all to see.