I have, on a regular basis, talked about how I love seeing an empty inbox. It just brings me joy. Partially because I use my inbox as a todo list and seeing things there means I have tasks to do, but also because seeing it empty means that I’m caught up on my work. When I started working in an office I was nowhere near as good at clearing out my inbox as I am now. I’m much better, but I do believe I could be even better still. Because we’ve been talking about automation this month, I figured I could drop a few suggestions on how to automate your inbox so that it makes it easier to deal with the daily onslaught of daily e-mails.

Block spam

While this isn’t TECHNICALLY an automation, making sure that you block and unsubscribe from things that you don’t want to receive is critical for keeping your inbox clean. I agree that in order to block things you need to take the action, but after that the e-mail system does all the work for you, so you don’t have to worry about it anymore. This feels like “automation” more than actual automation, but I’ll split that hair to make sure you keep your inbox as clear as possible.

Use rules

This is something I’ve started doing with my own e-mail and it’s saved me SO MUCH time. I do have a bunch of e-mail that I have (or feel the need) to keep, but I don’t necessarily look at them. These are things like receipts and things that get e-mailed to me automatically. For these I have created a series of rules in my inbox, so that they can do what I’m going to be filing them anyway.

These can typically be set up in your e-mail by going through settings. I will admit, some e-mail clients don’t do a great job of setting up rules within their systems. Specifically, um…mine. It’s OK though, because while the client I use for my personal e-mail doesn’t have the ability to set up rules, the e-mail itself can, and so my email client will follow the rules that I set up at the email level. If the client you are using doesn’t seem to have a way to set up rules for auto-filing e-mails, I would check to see if it is called something else, and then I would see if your e-mail online can do the same that mine is doing.

Update as needed

We all know I love a good update. Unlike with the usual updates I like talking about (making sure your apps are up to date), what I’m talking about here is making sure that your e-mail automations are correct on a regular basis. This doesn’t need to be a terribly involved process. It could be as simple as making sure that any unwanted e-mails are blocked every once in a while. The beauty of this kind of automation is that it doesn’t need constant checking and monitoring. If you don’t want it in your inbox, block it and move on.

Empty inboxes (as we know) make me happy. It makes me even happier when I don’t have to spend a lot of time going through so much junk mail to get to the stuff that is actually meant for me. With so much email traffic out there it’s easy to get lost in how much email comes your way. With these easy practices, it can make your life that much simpler so that you can focus on what you need to instead of what you have to.

How do you organize your mail?

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