It’s estimated that around 300 billion emails are sent each day. Even assuming that a large chunk of those are likely to be spam messages, that’s still a whole lot of emails zipping about. It’s fair to say therefore that despite the rise of social networks, email remains the predominant form of communication, especially in corporate environments.

Could you live without email for a day?

A movement started last year to stop our addiction to email. No Email Day ran on the 12th December with the aim of asking us to stop using email for one day.  The movement’s founder Paul Lancaster explains

“This would involve switching off your email completely (or simply ignoring it) so you can focus completely on your ‘real work’ or ‘art’ that is currently going undone.

“If you do need to contact someone on this day, emails should be strictly off limits – replaced instead by real life, face to face interaction, picking up the phone or perhaps even writing a letter (remember those?) Better still if you can spend time away from work to be inspired and re-connect with the offline world.”

Here are five tips for reducing your email overload

Five tips for reducing email overload

1. Send less – Be the change you want to see.  If you want people to send you less email, try sending them less.
2. Alert people to your checking times – It’s good practice to allocate yourself time for checking emails as your productivity isn’t interrupted by new messages.  Add a message to your signature telling people when your ‘checking’ times are.
3. Turn off notifications – You know those email alerts you get from LinkedIn or Twitter?  Try turning those off and visiting the sites when you want to make use of them rather than having them tempt you back in with notifications that Joe Bloggs is now following you.
4. Be ruthless with your out of office – You know when you go on holiday and have thousands of emails waiting for you?  It tempts many of us to check whilst we’re away.  Stop.  You deserve (and need) a break.  Instead set your out of office to say that you’ll delete all messages sent during your holiday upon your return.  If a matter is urgent, please contact you again when you return.
5. Flag accordingly – Either categorize your emails or include something in the subject line that tells people a) how urgent it is, and b) whether they need to respond.

Email is a wonderful tool, but we need to make sure we use it properly to stop it ruining our productivity.  What tips do you have?