One of the most powerful things you can do to stem the tidal wave of email (not THIS email, of course, since it ultimately ADDS time to your life and only takes two minutes to read!) is [...]]]> Besides automatically updating your multiple online social networking sites and bill paying (last week), “What else can you automate?”

One of the most powerful things you can do to stem the tidal wave of email (not THIS email, of course, since it ultimately ADDS time to your life and only takes two minutes to read!) is to use “Rules” to automatically filter your email so you’ll have less to process and more time to be productive.

Before doing this, however, some New Years cleaning may be in order. If you have the habit of using your Inbox as a storage box, I would suggest creating a new folder called “Storage 2009″ and moving (drag and drop) all of your 2009 email that is currently in your Inbox to it. It will be there if you ever need it (probably won’t), but notice how much lighter you’ll feel after you do this. Try it and see.

When you’re email box is completely empty, possibly for the first time in ages, pay close attention to all new email that comes in and get ruthless with it. Have the goal to process it ASAP to avoid Inbox bloat and maintain that ‘light,’ reduced stress feeling.

You are in control. You are the master.

When you find yourself deleting lots of emails from the same sender over and over again, first try to unsubscribe. Be careful though: make sure it isn’t some fake (SPAM) email that could be “fishing” for active email addresses to send more SPAM to. If it’s something you know is legit or that you’re subscribed to but no longer wish to receive it, unsubscribe.

If you’ve tried to unsubscribe and they’re still sending you stuff, rather than waste any more time harassing them to remove you (been there, done that), simply create a new Rule that automatically either 1) sends all email that is addressed from them to the Trash as soon as it comes in or 2) marks the email as SPAM or Junk and automatically moves it to the Junk or Trash folder. Problem solved. Now you should never see email from that sender again in your Inbox.

In Outlook, simply RIGHT-click on the email you want to create a rule for and select Create Rule… Then simply follow the yellow brick road.