For me, I still have one big time-zap in my day. Email. It’s the one thing I haven’t been able to get fully under control… until now. I want to share a few tips, some of which you might not have considered, for optimizing your inbox and email habits to become a more productive writer. But first…

How Email Can Become a Time Suck

Before you can focus on optimizing your email inbox, you need to figure out which problems you’re trying to tackle. How does your email actually interfere with your day? Here are a few examples of problems an overwhelming inbox can cause if you don’t get it under control.

• If you use a single email program to download and manage both business and personal email, personal messages can distract you during the hours you’re supposed to be working.  Sometimes there isn’t even a clear distinction — like email from a colleague that varies between personal and work-related.
• When you get hundreds to thousands of messages in a short period of time, it can take a little while to sort through spam that got through your filter.
• When you have a bunch of unread messages in your inbox, you can feel tempted to take care of them all at once even if only one or two are actually urgent and worth interrupting other things you’re working on at that moment.
• If you subscribe to blog comments (your own or someone else’s) notifications of comments can pull you out of your intended work routine. You instead get caught up in the conversations. (This was one of my own biggest problems.)

How to Organize and Optimize Your Email for Increased Productivity

Here are a few things I’ve done to get my inbox back under control, and ideas that might work for you too.

• If too much spam seems to be getting through, increase your server-side spam controls (if you host your own email). I had this problem after merging to our new server, even though I used the exact spam settings we used previously. I don’t know why, but I had to get stricter about spam.
• If you run one or more blogs using WordPress, go into the settings and tell WordPress to stop sending you comment notifications if you currently receive them. Instead set aside time to manually check comments once or twice a day to moderate and respond to them.
• Unsubscribe from comment subscriptions on others’ blogs. I used to subscribe for convenience. But in reality it became the biggest distraction of all. It’s easy to get caught up in conversations when you tell yourself it’s just a quick email check. I cancelled those subscriptions, and won’t subscribe to others unless absolutely necessary (such as if I write a guest post and want to stay on top of every comment coming through). This is a situation where a tool that’s supposed to be convenient actually becomes more of an inconvenience if you’re not careful.
• Make use of your email folders. Filter email from specific people into their own email folders. For example, I frequently exchange emails with Yolander Prinzel and Lori Widmer. So those lucky ducks have their very own folders now. When we have a long back and forth conversation I can see who’s responded recently without having to see the email content by default. I can get back to it when I have more time instead of immediately jumping in and procrastinating on other things that need to get done. You can do the same for clients who tend to email you a lot, people who love to send you those fun little forwards you don’t always have time for, or for more personal contacts you want to respond to after you complete your scheduled work.
• Decrease the frequency of automatic email checks. Personally I use Windows Mail to download my email from my server. I used to have it automatically download emails every half hour. When I’d get a notification of new email, I’d check it. Now I have it check once an hour, and as I ween myself from the habit I’ll have the automatic checks occur even less frequently. I’m still working on my manual check habit though. I’m trying to knock that off entirely other than when I’m waiting on something urgent.
• If you use browser-based email, turn off instant notifications. If your browser toolbar tells you you have new mail the moment it comes through and you can’t resist checking it, turn that feature off.
• If you run multiple email accounts through a single software app like I do, try setting some addresses to manual checks only — the ones you don’t use as frequently. For example, I have two email addresses I check obsessively, and the rest are usually site-specific and can be checked once each day. They can be removed from the automatic downloads and manually downloaded at the beginning and / or end of the day.

Do you have other tips for getting your email inbox under control so you can avoid the distraction? Has overwhelming email affected you in some other way than the examples I gave? Leave a comment below to share your own stories and tips.

Website: http://www.richardstooker.com/auto/

Specialty: email and autoresponders

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Facts tell, but stories sell. I’ve published short stories professionally and have a novel for sale at Amazon. I also have a sales background. So I am one of the few copywriters who combine a background of professional storytelling with sales. I can also write sales letters, SEO web content, books and blog posts. I’m a thorough researcher with five nonfiction books selling on Amazon. I’m trained in the Jay White email autoresponder method. (Jay is a top writer used by such marketers as Rich Shefren, Stephen Pierce, Alex Mandossian and others.) I have a site at IncomeInvestHome.com . I am an EzineArticles Platinum author.

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I am a professional writer with a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and seven years of experience in journalism, publishing, and education. I can offer you a writing style that is crisp and detailed, integrating sundry details into a coherent and well-organized whole.

My specialty is communication writing, internal and external. Whether the project is a grant proposal, press release or blog, office file, Web site content, manual, research project, or written message, you can rest assured that it is in the hands of a seasoned and creative professional.

Feel free to give me a try.

Take small steps.

Set a goal (or rather table of goals) to check it only once every 30 minutes, then an hour, then every four hours (which is probably twice per workday) and then you can do it once per workday / 24 hours. You can create a time table that works for you.

Charge yourself. You probably have some money you allow yourself to spend on something you don’t have to have, you just really want, like a Starbucks budget or similar. For every time you break your set goal, you take away a certain set amount. It tends to demotivate the bad behavior because it suuucks.

Reward yourself.

Jenn does a great job explaining this in her goal-setting post. (And she really goes into good detail about this in her Web Writer’s Guide. If you haven’t invested the $37 in that book yet, stop reading this post. You’d do better with your time to get to that book now!)

Set reasonable exceptions.

Allow yourself to respond to networking conversations or really important queries when you want to, so you can check for that email (and that email only!) unless it’s a client email.

Really, it is just a good idea to look at email but not take more time than it takes to scan subject lines (or emails if your contacts haven’t maneuvered those well) and only respond during a set, important time and not get distracted and off track.

Geeky fantasy imagery aside, spending too much time and energy on email is a serious problem for freelance writers. The time spent on email is too much, too frequent and too inefficient for a serious business owner to condone. Personally, I have some harsh rules regarding my email. Rules I didn’t think I could follow, but it comes to setting firm rules with clients and vendors.

1. Only check your email once per 24 hour period. Unless you’ve got project critical elements being delivered via email, don’t touch your email. If you’re accessing your inbox for project critical elements, tunnel-vision your way there.
2. Don’t just click what interests you—have a system. Use folders or labels to sort your email messages into actionable contexts (such as Read / Reader for ezines you need to read, social networking site notifications such as a LinkedIn folder for recommendation requests).
3. Give as much as is due. Don’t respond to worthless emails (junk forwards, fired clients not getting the hint, spam) and don’t write unnecessarily lengthy responses. As a general rule, write an email subject and stick to it. Use those writing skills!

How to you keep email from sludging your workday? What are the struggles you face?

You probably try to be as helpful as you can–responding to comments, answering emails, giving advice when asked for it, and just generally trying to help your readers.

But sometimes you just have to say no. You have to let your readers (or some of them) fend for themselves. Here are some situations where it’s probably best not to respond privately:

You Already Answered Their Question. – If you’ve written a half dozen posts about where to find article writing gigs (given the freelance writing niche as an example), then I wouldn’t bother answering that question privately. There’s a reason you blog or publish public content, and it’s archived. If someone really wants that answer, they can very easily search for it. The only exception might be if your articles are scattered on multiple sites rather than a single site or blog of your own.

The Reader is Lazy – You might be surprised at how many times people email me asking “How can I earn a lot of money writing for the Web?” and other things along those lines. Obviously, there’s no easy answer. These are the folks who expect you to give them a step-by-step on how to do what you do–they want to replicate your success without doing any of the real work of setting up their businesses for themselves. I generally don’t attempt to answer these questions anymore. All of the answers are “out there” and if people aren’t willing to help themselves first, then I’m not going to take my time to do it for them. Now I point them to my e-book if they want a thorough background on getting started.

You Can’t Afford the Time – The reality is that you’re trying to make a living, build a readership, etc. for yourself. That takes time–a lot of it. There will be times when you honestly just can’t respond to every comment, email, tweet, and such. In those cases, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being selective.

You’re Being Used as a Crutch – Once in a while a reader comes along who asks you a question. You respond. They ask you another. You respond. They ask another. You start to feel like a private (unpaid) consultant on call at their every whim, but since you’ve set the standard of trying to be helpful, you don’t have the heart to tell them to bugger off. It is OK to stop responding if you’re either being taken advantage of or if you’re simply being asked to devote more time than can be justified to one person. I’m generally OK with people asking for things like feedback on their site or blog, but when it comes to someone wanting a private step-by-step tutorial on doing something (setting up a portfolio, then finding prospective clients, then wanting help with their query letter, etc.) then it starts to get excessive.

Fortunately there’s something you can do to answer these private questions while still making good overall use of your own time – you can turn your answers into posts or articles themselves so readers with similar questions can get the answer without you having to respond repeatedly privately.

Taking time out for your readers is a good thing–and a part of the job. But managing your time effectively so you can stay productive is equally important. Where do you draw the line?