Managing Emails.

One of the awesome (read: sometimes less-than-awesome) parts of being a college student is having an extra email inbox to take care of. I’ve gotten to the point now where I’ve pretty much abandoned my seven-year-oldYahoo! email for my Salem account, and to be honest, it’s terrible. There are 3000 unread messages sitting in that inbox, waiting for my attention. Frankly, I just don’t enjoy the Yahoo! system anymore. 

But, fear not! I do possess some valuable email-management skills that I’ve learned from using Gmail for Salem and (hooray!) this blog. Actually, friends who have seen my inbox have told me how ridiculous it actually is… little do they know.  

There are several amazing advantages to having a Google inbox. Here’s how I manage my school and blogging accounts. So far, it’s proved to be a very easy structure to keep up with, but it includes a visual aspect that makes it easier for me to see what needs my attention the most. 

• Use labels. Most email providers have some sort of label system built into the program. For my school inbox, I’ve created different colored labels for nearly every possible category. For instance, red is administration, light blue is my salem signature class, pink is political science, etc. Using these labels is quick, and makes the process of finding a specific message much, much easier. 

• Delete the junk as soon as possible. This should be a no-brainer, but I’m guilty of letting spam emails clock my Yahoo! inbox. Although I don’t really get “junk” mail on my school account, I do go through the emails regularly and delete anything that I know I’m not going to need (like internships that I’m, unfortunately, not eligible for…). Doing this is so much more satisfying than you would ever believe.

• Use a signature. I have a signature applied automatically to every email sent from my Salem account. It’s so much easier to give everyone information they need to know about me right there, rather than potentially starting an inbox-clogging chain (trust me… that’s not fun). When including my phone number, I also put the acceptable times to call or text me so I'm not interrupted during class or when I'm sleeping. 

• “Star” or “Flag” important messages. If there’s an urgent message or something for a project I'm working on waiting for me in my inbox, I’ll star them so that it takes less than 2 seconds to find them. My school inbox can get clogged up by messages from administration, professors, and other students/student organizations so quickly that starring, for me, is a must. I love this part of email systems… so convenient. 

These steps might seem like no-brainers, but the key to this system is to keep up with consistently labeling, clearing, starring, etc. Letting it slide leaves you with an inbox that just reverts back to the old, black hole of lost messages and spam. 

Keep not settling, 

image credit.