Should You Be Afraid of What’s Hiding In Your Email?

Do you avoiding looking at your email?

Do you let it pile up until you never see the bottom of your inbox?

Emptying your inbox is an important task that helps you avoid missing important items.

Do you know what is lurking in your inbox?

What’s Hiding in Your Inbox?

I am not a fan of checking your email too often, but I do believe it addressing it.

“In fact, the only email habit worse than constantly checking it… is never reading it at all.”

When you don’t read your email, you are setting yourself up for all kinds of issues.

What’s in your inbox that you aren’t addressing:

  • Deadlines
  • Meetings
  • Important Information
  • Responses to your inquiries
  • Missed Opportunities

If you aren’t reading your email, what are you missing?

Taking Action on Your Email

To keep your email under control you need to check it regularly.

However, more important that reading your email is acting on it.

Here are some simple tips for acting on your email:

  1. Check It Regularly – If you never read your email, there is bound to be something in there that is going to burn you. Don’t check it days or weeks, and later you will find out that you have missed an important deadline or opportunity.
  2. Be Decisive – Reading an email, closing it, and then leaving it in your inbox is counter-productive. A good rule to practice is “if you open an email you act on it right then.” And if it is something that requires more time or follow-up then add the item to your todo list.
  3. Archive/File It – Your inbox shouldn’t be your todo list. Nor is it a file-box. Get those emails out of your inbox.
  4. Delete It – Don’t be afraid to use the “delete” button when processing your email. Too many people think they must keep each and every email they receive. Trust me, you aren’t going to suddenly need that “thank you” email down the road.
  5. Don’t Respond to Every Email – Not every email deserves a response. Just because someone fired off something to your inbox doesn’t require you to respond. Remember, the more email you send, the more will end up right back in your inbox.

Keep That Inbox In Check

Take a look at your inbox today.

What’s in there may surprise you.

The longer you leave it unaddressed, the greater chance that you are going to miss something important.

So, don’t just look at your email today… do something about it.

Question: How do you keep your inbox in check?

5 thoughts on “Should You Be Afraid of What’s Hiding In Your Email?

  1. great advice. It’s a real job processing email to zero but once you get it it’s awesome.

  2. Great list – always love the deleting email. One way of making email less a onerous is to get less. You get less by removing yourself from mailing lists that are just ads and sending only emails to those you need to as ccing he universe is asking for trouble.

  3. Thanks to GMail for Android, managing my inbox has NEVER been easier.. But, I delete what I don’t need, use labels for everything I do keep and archive what I’ve done. So what’s left in my inbox usually has a big RED “PENDING” label on it. I get about 250-300 emails a DAY. So it’s important to keep it clear, especially as I have everything filtered to my gMail, both personal and business.

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