10 Commandments To Heal Your Email

During the 1990’s the Electronic Messaging Association calculated that over 94 million users would send over 5.5 trillion e-mail messages in 1999.

There wasn’t a trillion but by 2000 8.2 billion emails were sent every day.

And just in case you hadn’t noticed spam (email you didn’t ask for and don’t want) has increased massively. And as you’ve noticed Trojans and viruses of all sorts abound.

So in the interests of reducing the amount of unwanted or diseased email try following these tips for better email management.

Your Ten Tips For Email Health

The following is a list of the things to do to heal the email overload and stress:

1. Don’t set-up a web site with your personal email address, use a cloaked email address that the email harvesters can’t recognise
2. If you read blogs don’t subscribe to get posts by email. Rather subscribe to the blog’s feed using the RSS button
3. Avoid using your real work email address when you sign up for anything on the Internet
4. When sending an email to a large circulation of people use the BCC (blind carbon copy) facility to include everyone you want to send the email to. That way no one, other than you, knows who else got the email. Then if someone forwards it to their own list of friends or colleagues your original email addresses are not sent with it
5. If you send regular emails allow your subscribers to unsubscribe and if they do make sure they don’t still get emailed – one I’ve seen quite a few times
6. If you’re sending a proposal to someone send it as a PDF to dramatically cut the risk of viruses for those reading it. You can find any number of free or shareware Word-to-PDF conversion tools on the Internet
7. When you get attachments always scan them with a virus checker before opening them
8. Use mailbox rules to automatically sort your inbox email and put emails in different folder-categories for you to read … later
9. If you use a spam checker there’s always a risk of an important email going into your spam folder so check new ‘spam’ emails once per day
10. Turn-off the sick neediness of the “you’ve got mail” sound and tray email notifier and stop looking at email every few minutes. Instead read email 3-4 times per day at a scheduled time. That helps you keep focus on the work you’re doing.