Managing Your E-mail

Each day billions of e-mail messages zap across the Internet. If it seems that most of them make their way to your Inbox, you're not alone. "Overwhelming" is how many people feel about this electronic communication. The bad news is that it will only get worse as the popularity of e-mail increases. The good news is that you can avoid drowning in a sea of messages by following some simple steps.

Keep your personal and professional lives separate, especially since employers in many countries can legally review messages on company mail servers. Do you really want your boss reading those off-color jokes? Having a separate personal account also means you aren't dealing with personal business on company time.

Answer your e-mail at set times during the day--perhaps the first thing in the morning, then mid-afternoon. This prevents incoming mail from interrupting other things you may be doing.

With e-mail programs such as Microsoft Outlook, you can customize the multi-pane display for quick viewing. Ideally you want to see who the sender is, the subject and be able to read the first few lines of the message. That way you don't have to open every message to discern its content.

Junk e-mail has become a fact of electronic life, so turn them to your advantage. Quickly review the message subject line and scan a line or two to identify spam. Now use the Delete key. Weeding out spam reduces your Inbox by half or more, providing a psychological boost when you only have fifty messages to deal with, instead of one hundred!