A recent study reported that email overload is making you work one to two hours longer every day, either at the office or when you get home. With the average business person receiving 50-60 email messages a day, people are getting confused about what email overload is.
Email overload is not the new messages coming in, but rather the mess that’s already there. Those hundreds or thousands of messages packed in your Inbox represent broken promises, missed deadlines, and unfinished work. To solve the problem, you have to lighten the load.
To get email under control, you’ll have to get organized so you can find answers fast; purge your Inbox until you see the bottom; change how you use the Inbox so you can keep it clear; establish routines that keep you on track; and learn tips in your software that help you finish everything quicker.
Here are a couple of Outlook tips to help you get through email quicker.
- Have Replies Sent to Someone Else - If you’re sending a message to your staff, you may want the replies to go to your assistant. It’s easy to set this up.
- Create a new email message. Click the Options button (if you don’t see it, click the View menu, Options).
- Under Delivery options, tick Have replies sent to, then type the email address you want the replies to go to.
- Click Close, and finish and send your message as you normally would.
- Save Email Attachments Fast - If you receive a message with several attachments you need to keep, you don’t have to open each one and click File, Save As.
- With the message open, click the File menu, Save Attachments.
- Click any file you don’t wish to save to deselect it.
- Save as you normally would.