Content

• To step
• Part 1 of 4: Changing your approach
• Part 2 of 4: Reducing bulk email
• Part 3 of 4: Set your own filters
• Part 4 of 4: Changing your habits
• Tips
• Warnings

If you rely on email as the main form of communication, you may have hundreds of unread messages in your inbox. Wading through this swamp trying to figure out which emails are worth reading can be extremely frustrating. To avoid having to deal with a mountain of emails every day, you can try to reduce the number of emails you receive. So it is important to limit the number of emails you receive to those that are of interest to you.

To step

Part 1 of 4: Changing your approach

1. Teach your email program to recognize spam. Mark messages that you consider spam so that they automatically stop in your inbox in the future. When you receive spam, select the message and mark it as spam. This will mark the sender as a spammer and all subsequent messages will end up in the spam folder.
   • Most webmail clients (such as Gmail and Hotmail) already have a spam filter built in that automatically moves spam from your inbox to the spam folder. Spam filters are able to recognize spam by their text and large number of recipients.
   • Spam messages are random, mass-sent emails, often for marketing purposes or a scam.
   • Since spam messages can contain viruses, it is a good idea not to open the message to mark it as spam. It is better to just delete the mail instead of getting a virus because you want to mark a message as spam as spam.
2. Try a different email service. Other email clients may sometimes have more powerful spam filters and other features. If you are not impressed with your email service, try another one.
   • Gmail is generally considered to be one of the more effective when it comes to filtering out spam, and it has a great number of tools available to help you manage your emails.
   • If your email address requires you to use a specific client, but you still want to try a different one, please forward your email so that you can receive emails at the other address through a different client.
3. Avoid websites and services that ask for an email address. Only forward your email to websites that you trust and are well known for. Never give out your email address unless it is really important. An email address is one of your personal forms of contact, such as your mobile or landline phone number. Responsible use of signing up for websites will often help reduce emails.
   • Although a website where you leave an e-mail address may not email you itself, it may happen that they sell to another company that will then send you spam.
   • Companies where you leave your e-mail address outside the internet can do that too. Be especially wary of notorious organizations such as travel agents and raffles. Because they know exactly what you are looking for, they will quickly resell your data to related companies or services.
4. Do not post your email address on websites. You may sometimes be tempted to post your email address on a website. This can be your own website or in a response to another website (such as news websites or blogs). Another common mistake is posting your email address on forums. There are trolls who scour the web for email addresses and then sell those addresses to companies that send spam. By taking a few measures you can make sure that this does not happen.
   • A frequently used solution is to unsubscribe the e-mail completely instead of as an e-mail address. So for example, "[email protected]" becomes "jackjohn at email dot com".
   • If you want to post your email address on your own website, create a link that will automatically generate an email for you, instead of listing the email address. This is called a "mailto:" link.

Part 2 of 4: Reducing bulk email

1. Unsubscribe from newsletters. Aside from spam, newsletters are one of the main factors contributing to a large influx of email. When you create accounts on various sites (such as newspapers and online stores where you have ever bought something) where you are required to provide an email address, these sites automatically subscribe you to their newsletters.
   • To stop receiving newsletters, all you have to do is open and scroll down the message. It is mandatory to place a link at the bottom of a newsletter that makes it possible for the recipient to unsubscribe from the newsletter. Click on the unsubscribe or unsubscribe link and your email address will be removed from the mailing list, so you will no longer receive newsletters from that website.
   • Your spam filter will not filter out these messages because they come from legitimate websites.
2. Change your social media settings. Social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter are often set up to send you emails every time you receive a message, mention, like, fav or comment. If you are tired of wasting your time checking your mobile every time it indicates a like has arrived, change your account settings so that you only get notified when there is something important happens, or so that you do not receive notifications of events at all.
   • Instead of receiving these constant notifications, it is better to manually check your account for activities at the end of the day. This is better than wading through a sea of ​​emails.
3. Set up a separate email address for spam. Another option, if you frequently use sites where you have to provide an email address or you want to receive the standard bulk messages, is to request a separate email address to receive those specific messages. Pass this on to websites and companies and use your private or business email as it is intended for.
   • You can also turn this around and request a new email address for private and business use.

Part 3 of 4: Set your own filters

1. Create your own filter. Most webmail clients have a filter option for filtering out messages. Message filters work in the same way as spam filters, except that the former is manually set by the user. You can create a filter for specific email addresses in such a way that every time you receive a message from that account, it automatically ends up in the trash.
   • To create filters, go to your account settings and select the "Filter" option. Now you can specify the email address which should be filtered out and where it should be redirected to (such as to the trash or a specific folder in your account).
2. Filter by sender. If you're constantly getting junk emails from certain email addresses (like those annoying daily jokes you get from a jolly colleague or classmate), consider filtering them out of your inbox. In this case, you will probably want to filter by the sender's email address and not by website. You can then ensure that the messages from those email addresses end up in a separate folder or are moved to junk mail.
3. Filter by subject. If spam manages to get through the mesh of standard filters, you can choose to set up your own filters, checking for common spam phrases. Here you filter on the content of the subject line of the e-mail message.
   • Examples may include the following words "Cialis", "Viagra" or "penis".
   • Make sure you don't use words that are sometimes right and sometimes wrong. You may be tired of e-mails about offers, but using the word "offer" as a reason to send a message to the trash is not a good idea. It may happen that you are interested in a particular offer.
4. Filter by content. Another option is to set up filters that check the content of an email for keywords or expressions, and then redirect this email if necessary. This is useful if you are tired of getting emails about a particular topic that is in the news a lot, or if you know that there will be a lot of messages coming in about something going on.
   • For example, suppose you run a fashion company and you just launched a new shirt for the hit series "Rainbow Unicorn Fighting Squad". You can set up a filter so that messages about that shirt are forwarded to a special folder, so you can handle those emails without losing track of the other important emails you get in.

Part 4 of 4: Changing your habits

1. Check your email at specific times. It's all too easy to spend a lot of time checking all your emails throughout the day. This is a common problem, especially in an office environment. That's why it's a good idea to try to change your habits and spend less time processing your email. Set limits and give yourself only 2 or 3 short moments during the day allowing yourself to check your email.
   • For example, check your email at 9 a.m., 1:30 p.m., and 5:00 p.m., and don't spend more than 10 minutes at a time.
   • If you are the owner of a business or a manager, you can also impose these rules on staff to increase productivity.
2. Avoid emailing to be polite. It is bad practice to reply to e-mail as a courtesy. They treat it like a conversation but it just makes everyone get even more email. Don't feel compelled to reply to an email with something like "Have a nice day" or "Thank you."
   • Only respond to indicate that you have received the message, if that is important. For example, if someone has sent you some paperwork, you should only respond by returning the completed or checked work, or emailing them when they can expect it.
3. Try to communicate through other channels as much as possible. Emails are useful for quick, short messages. The kind where it doesn't take more than two or three exchanges of messages to complete a conversation. If it is necessary to send many more messages, it is more convenient to handle this over the phone or to make an appointment with the person in question, so that you save each other all emails and a lot of time.
4. Limit the number of messages you can send per day. If you want to help reduce the time you spend on email and the amount of emails others have to read, try putting a limit on the number of emails you can send per day. This makes you think better about which messages are or are not important enough to send.
   • For example, if you soon have to send a message to your boss, you may be less likely to let everyone know that your daughter has started a new business.
   • If you want to send the same message to everyone, there are better methods. Try grabbing a post-it on everyone's lunch box in the fridge, for example.

Tips

• There are cases where you still receive newsletters even after unsubscribing. When this happens, log in directly to the website where the newsletter came from and go to your account settings to stop receiving emails.
• Since most web email clients are free, there is only a limited amount of storage space for your emails on their servers. That's why it makes sense to maintain a clean mailbox.

Warnings

• Check your spam folder every now and then to make sure you haven't missed anything important.