How to Manage Email More Efficiently

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Does your heart start pounding when you think about all the emails you haven't responded to?

Is your inbox just a total mess?

If the answer is yes, here is a quick guide on how you can manage your emails more efficiently.

(and hey, if just reading all this is already sending you into a spiral of depression, reach out to me. I can do it for you!)

Step 1: Unsubscribe from newsletters

Let's be honest, you never read newsletters anyway.

Do you really need 8 different gym wear brands emailing you about their newest drops? I didn't think so. Here's how to clean them up:

In Gmail type "label:^unsub"

This will bring up all the emails that have an unsubscribe link in it. You can go through them and manually unsubscribe to them all.

In Outlook, simply search for "unsubscribe", "manage preferences", or "click here to unsubscribe".

Both Gmail and Outlook will have an unsubscribe button at the top of the emails if they have an unsubscribe link present.

Of course, the beauty here is that once you've done one brand, you can search for that brand in your email and delete all the newsletters as you won't need to unsubscribe to every individual email.

There are also 3rd party apps that you can use:

Unroll.me (easy, but has privacy concerns)
Clean Email
Leave Me Alone (great for privacy-focused users)

Step 2: labels and Automation

The easiest way to keep your inbox clean is to have your email provider automatically label and filter your emails for you.

In some cases you might not want to unsubscribe from newsletters, but there's no need for them to be in your inbox.

Creating a separate folder for these emails to automatically be filtered into will help with that.

Another label that can be useful is invoices and receipts.

So how do you set this up? It's really simple.

Creating a label

In Gmail on the lefthand side you can see "Labels". Click on the big plus next to it. This will allow you to create a new folder.

You can add as many labels as you want, and you can "nest" them too. However you like to organise your emails, there's an option for it.

Of course, just creating the label isn't enough to organise your emails. You still need the emails to be sorted into these labels.

This can be done manually, or you can set up a filter to do this automatically.

Setting up a filter

In Gmail, click the search bar at the top.
Click the sliders icon on the right (that opens advanced search).
In the form:
- From: (e.g., enter invoice senders like stripe.com, paypal.com, or @yourclient.com)
- OR in Subject: type invoice, receipt, or payment
- You can also use Has the words: invoice OR receipt OR payment
Click “Create filter”.

Quick tip: a lot of receipt emails will say "your order". However, if you use this as a filter you will get updates about orders, tracking information, etc.. filtered into your receipts folder.

On the next screen:

Check “Skip the Inbox (Archive it)” if you don’t want them in your main inbox.
Check “Apply the label” → choose your “Invoices” label.
(Optional) Check “Also apply filter to matching conversations” to catch existing ones.
Click “Create filter.”

And there you have it. You can now set up filters for whatever emails you want filtered out of your inbox so only the important ones stay!

Step 3: Set aside a specific time for when to check your emails

It is far too easy to quickly check your emails throughout the day. The downside is that you might get sucked into replying and/or organising some of your emails and suddenly you've turned 5 spare minutes into a 45 minute ordeal.

So simply designate some time in the morning, around lunchtime and at the end of your day to check your emails. You don't have to do it 3 times a day, I just find that this works best for me. It allows me to set my tasks for the day, notice if an urgent email came in, and check if any responses have come in throughout the day.

Step 4: If it takes less than 5 minutes, just do it now

This seems quite obvious, but you'd be surprised at how often people will say "I'll deal with this later" when it only takes 2 minutes to respond to something. Instantly responding to an email saves you the mental load of having to remember that email and it will clear your inbox.

Nike said it best: just do it!

Step 5: Stop using your personal for business and vice versa

Seriously, don't do this. Mixing personal and business emails is one of the fastest ways to lose track of important messages (and look unprofessional).

Why?

Missed opportunities. Having business emails mixed in between Amazon receipts, Skyscanner alerts and party invites means you can easily miss an important opportunity
Security risks. Personal emails are far more likely to end up in data leaks. Don't risk your business by using your personal email for business.
Professionalism. People will take you far more seriously if your email is "person@business.com" than "Chocolatelover15@gmail.com". (I love chocolate so I get it, but it just isn't professional!)

Inbox chaos doesn’t have to rule your life. Whether you do it yourself or hand it off, organizing your email can seriously boost your focus and free up mental space. If you’d rather skip the hassle, message me! I’ll clean it up for you.