Organize and Manage Your Email
The biggest problem with Email is that all email is created equal, at least as far as your mail server is concerned. It happily downloads those jokes, junk mail, letters from Aunt Edna, your boss's memo and newsletters to you inbox as if they were all of equal importance. There are ways to better manage the flow of your email by setting up folders and email rules.

1. Here is the best advice I can give you: DON'T keep read email in your Inbox unless it is something you will need in the next two days. Answer it, delete it or move it! The second best advice is this: if you are receiving mailings or newletters by email that are no longer useful to you, opt-out or unsubscribe now!
2. Your standard email package comes with a few folders: Inbox, Outbox, Send Items, Trash and Drafts or some combination of folders that the program uses to identify basic types of email. While it is unwise to change or delete these as your email program requires these to function, nothing says you can't add your own. Adding a folder may be different for each email program but generally you can use your program menu bar File|New|Folder to add and name a folder. To give you an idea of what folders to create my list includes Personal, Business, Newsletters as general folders and I set up specific folders for tasks that I am working on at the moment. I also added folders under each section, for example under Business I have a folder for each client and one for suppliers. I also have a folder called Internet Accounts where I keep emails from websites with my log on names and passwords. As emails are read, I decide if I need to keep it and if I do, I move it by highlighting it and dragging it to the approriate folder.
3. Most email packages also let you set up mail rules which tell the program how to handle emails from specific addresses. With email rules you can use colors to prioritize your emails. For example, my junkmail (using the program's preset filters for common junkmail subject lines) show up in my inbox in grey; messages from important people who email I want to read right away show up in my inbox in red; Clients emails are purple; and best friends & family are blue. I can then pick out the messages I read first from the black default and grey messages.
4. I belong to several newsletters and mailing lists. I know that I will eventually read these but since they are usually not my first priority, I use mail rules to move these emails directly into a folder. For example, I receive emails from Intuit Quickbooks ProAdvisor program. Since they always come from the same address, I have set up a rule to move those messages directly into my Quickbooks folder. When unread messages are available in that folder I see a number in brackets beside the folder like this Quickbooks (3). This way I don't miss an update and "filing" of the message is already done for me.
5. Finally, for the messages that are allowed to stay in my inbox, I use the email's marking options to help me take action. For messages that I want to reply to or that have an article or website that I need to check out, I use the flag feature. In my program, I can right click on the message and insert a flag icon beside the message. I can also set a deadline for taking action and have the program remind me. This helps me keep on track in dealing with my email in a timely manner.