Does e-mail consume too much of your time? Take our 5 Day E-Mail Challenge and see the impact a few simple habit changes can make in your work day. You may also respond with suggestions and comments after implementing these 5 tips, and let us know what you think.

Try implementing these simple steps, one per day, and by the end of the week, you should have 5 new ways to impact your use of e-mail.

Day 1
Wait one hour before checking your e-mail upon arriving to work. Use the first hour to be productive on a project you have to accomplish. (If e-mail is a core component of tracking customers or sales, this option may not be advantageous for you)

Day 2
Don’t forward e-mails that were forwarded to you, unless they are work related and must be forwarded on. Disregard the “fun” forwarded e-mails.

Day 3
When you check your e-mail messages and view the “new” messages you have received, delete unneeded messages or spam first, then process the important e-mails which are left. This prevents unnecessary e-mails from being stored in your inbox.

Day 4
Create an e-mail account through a free online e-mail provider (Yahoo, Hotmail, Google, etc) to be used for when you make online purchases or subscribe to things for personal use. This prevents your business or “real” e-mail from being populated with special offers, promotions and inbound marketing e-mail.

Day 5
If using Microsoft Outlook, take a look at the Tools, Organize menu option. You can very quickly set up rules to filter, color code and route e-mail to specific folders you have set up.

Do you wish to discuss your e-mail challenges further with a professional organizer with Encore?