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.

For example, do you use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.? If so, managing them all can be very time consuming.

You can use a free service called Ping (Ping.fm). You sign up for an account and enter the login and passwords for all of your [...]]]> Anytime you can use automation to streamline your life, I say, “Do it.”

For example, do you use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.? If so, managing them all can be very time consuming.

You can use a free service called Ping (Ping.fm). You sign up for an account and enter the login and passwords for all of your social networking accounts. Then, all you have to do is update your status (or Micro-blogs or Blogs) once in Ping and it automatically updates all of your social network sites instantly! How cool is THAT?

What else can you automate? That’s a great question to ask yourself on an ongoing basis.

How about bill paying? How much time do you spend manually filling out checks or even paying online for that matter? Paying online is more productive than writing checks, but having your bills paid automatically is even better. It only takes a little time to set this up, but then it’s totally automatic.

More and more companies are offering this service of automatic payments via credit card or bankcard, but read the fine print for any hidden fees. On a side note, I don’t recommend paying bills with a credit card unless you’re highly disciplined and you’re using it to double-dip, for example you get frequent flier miles for every dollar spent using the card, and you pay off the balance entirely every month.

Check with your bank. You may be able to set up automatic payments for free. Go with whatever makes the most sense, not necessarily the most cents. Going through your bank instead of separate companies has the advantage of keeping everything centralized, which is more productive than having to log into multiple company websites when there’s a problem.

Making payments automatically is great for bills that are the same amount every month (cable TV, internet service, fixed rate mortgage/rent, personal loans, karate/gym memberships, etc.). You’ll have to keep a closer eye on bills that fluctuate (utilities, certain phone plans, adjustable rate mortgage (ARM), etc.).

If you use Quick Books (powerful and simple to use accounting program for small businesses) or Quicken (super easy to use personal checkbook program) or some other checkbook program, you can set up recurring transactions in advance that can remind you when they’re about to occur.

(Continued next week.)