5 bad email habits that waste your time

If you’ve checked your email recently, there’s a big chance you’ve felt overwhelmed or even frustrated by it.

We’ve all been there, and we all know how annoying this can be. For many people, this is even the sign that email just isn’t as good as it used to be, that email is broken. But what if email could be fixed just by changing the way you deal with it?

Here are five ways to overcome the bad habits that rule your inboxes.

1. Overflowing your inbox with unnecessary information.

The desire to stay on top of everything is great. However, this will often lead you to subscribe to many unnecessary threads, newsletters and email notifications that crowd your inbox. You’ll spend more time triaging your inbox in search of the messages that truly matter than actually getting things done.

Instead, clean up your inbox

Keep only the things that truly matter to you and that you actually open on a regular basis. Everything else should go. Unsubscribe from all your newsletters in one click, with apps like Unroll.me, and stop the notifications you don’t need (or at least bundle them). Your inbox will feel lighter, and you will too.