1. Stop playing Tetris

Email is like Tetris. No matter how fast you are, there’s always more coming, and faster. An average person today sends and receives 122 business emails per day. By 2019 it will be at least 126 per day and doesn’t even include your personal email. Since days in 2019 will still only be 24 hours long, something has to change—you. You need to change the way you think about email, and the way you process it.

2. Don’t let email be your #1 priority

Email is your to-do list that other people can write on. Be proactive and focus on your own to-do list. Scan your Inbox for urgent/important items in the morning, and then work on your top priorities. Dedicate blocks of time to processing email, and treat email processing as one of your priorities—not the default Priority #1. If you’re ever sucked into “doing email,” ask yourself if clearing your Inbox really the best use of time right now! Eventually it will be – but make a conscious decision about it.

3. Not all emails are created equal

Every email interface gives the same amount of real estate on the screen to each message. This tricks our subconscious into thinking every email is equally important. But that’s wrong—some emails need to be dealt with right away (urgent/important). Some can wait (non-urgent/important). And others should be archived/deleted in bulk (unimportant). According to our data the unimportant bucket contains, on average, 62% of emails (up from 58% just a few years ago). Here’s how SaneBox helps you:

• SaneBox filters out the unimportant emails into the SaneLater folder so you can archive or delete them all at once.
• You can move the non-urgent/important emails into one of our Snooze folders
• Now your email only contains emails that you need to deal with today.  And if you don’t get to all of them, it’s ok – just snooze them until tomorrow!