There was a time in my life when email handling would bring my productivity to a standstill. It was often that I put off an email response because I believed it deserved more time then I had to offer at that moment. The problem that brought is that I often forgot or the email became buried under many others. Over the years I have found that any response to an email is better then a good response at a later time. Last year I was receiving a great deal of emails inquiring about pricing and packages I offer for wedding photography services. Each email was unique enough that a boxed answer or saved response would not be sufficient. Emails were falling through the cracks. Often it was weeks before I responded due to being so far behind. Brides act quicker then that. Besides that, I was guilty of saving emails after I respond to them. I would have 100 or so in my inbox that I kept there in case a response came back with out the first communication attached to it. When that grew to difficult to manage I set up folders in my email application to keep them organized. I never went inside those folders. If I need to find something, a quick search would bring me what I desired thus rendering the organization of my emails pointless. It would be no different if they were all in one folder. After watching the InboxZero video I decided to implement that as my new policy for email handling. On occasion I backslide, but it does not take as much effort to get back to an empty inbox as it used to. For a person who receives 50-100 legitimate emails a day and 4-5000 in spam, inboxzero has helped me beyond measure. I suggest you watch this video and use from it what you believe would work for you.
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