From the course: Time Management Tips

How to deal with feeling overwhelmed

From the course: Time Management Tips

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How to deal with feeling overwhelmed

- It's easy to get buried by email and not know how to dig yourself out. Perhaps you have hundreds or thousands of emails in your inbox. Here are some tips to get you out of that situation. First, get in the habit of using your calendar. Sometimes people store emails in their inbox in the hopes that it will remind them of unresolved tasks. Instead, schedule time to complete those tasks in your calendar. Or use task reminders that pop up at appropriate times. Second, whenever you're done with an email, archive it, or delete it. Email search engines are powerful and you don't need to keep everything in your inbox. Instead, use the archive, or designate one folder for archiving all your email. Use the inbox only for incomplete or unprocessed items. Third, create a schedule to deal with email in a focused way. This means that you have a recurring time every day, or multiple times a week, where you do nothing but respond to email and bring that gathering point to zero. If you need help with processing your email inbox, check out my course, Time Management Fundamentals. But what if you have thousands of emails that you feel you'll never be able to dig out of? I recommend that you pick a date in the past, perhaps 30 days ago, and declare email bankruptcy as of that date. Don't delete everything, instead power archive everything in your inbox that's older than the date you choose. This gives you a more reasonable space to work yourself out of this feeling of being overwhelmed. It also makes sure you don't lose any email info, just in case. There is hope for getting out of email overload. You just need to create a plan and then execute that plan.

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