Overload | The art of handling your overflowing inbox

Ultimately, there is no viable alternative to email.

Whilst work chats and office tools are abundant and effective, emails are efficient, they allow your clients and peers to contact you, they’re (ideally) less time consuming than a phone call and they leave a paper trail when you’re scrabbling for a document that you know was sent to you. However, whilst a clean and tidy inbox is achievable on a quiet day, for many, their inbox is a mess of useless marketing emails, spam and irrelevant information making finding important data that bit harder.

Email has become a relentless form of communication that, like an over-flowing pot, can feel as though it’s never-ending. While some are better than others at dealing with it, email overkill impacts every one of us. We are all vulnerable to the demand from emails and the disruption it brings to our working day.

When it comes to coping mechanisms, there are two schools of thought; those who avoid it entirely and have to wade through on a daily basis to make sure they are picking out relevant messages, and those who tackle their inboxes by working through them on a regular basis. Neither of these approaches get to the root of the problem though, so here are a number of alternative approaches that might help to get a grip on your inbox.