Go right to my post on techniques.

I really wish I remember where I’d seen it, but I recently came across an article that talked about managing email overload. This isn’t a new topic by any means, and the most common piece of advice that the article gave is to check email at specific regular intervals of the day rather than “all the time.” A related piece of advice was to turn off the email notifications for your mail program.

The piece of advice that really stood out to me, though, was to answer every single letter in your inbox when you do check, before moving on to any other task. The article suggested that this helps you to get to the point, be brief, and focus on the task of answering email itself. I’ve been reading email overload management articles for months now and not making any changes, but that unique piece of advice sounded so ridiculous that I had to try it. So how has it been working out so far?