e remainder for another time, you start with 100 on the third day. In a week, when you open your inbox, instead of the 50 that you began with that week, you now are looking at 225 things to make decisions about. Stress starts to builWhile keeping up with the daily paper flow in one’s inbox is a challenge for most people, the same situation is repeating itself with email. It is not unusual to see hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of collected emails in someone’s inbox.

Each time you fail to make an immediate decision on what to do with a message, it becomes clutter, just as the stacks of paper that accumulate in offices do. This clutter is not only physical clutter but mental clutter, distracting you from the immediate tasks at hand.

Consider two ways that these accumulate. Start by imagining you left a totally empty inbox last night and that you receive fifty email messages a day.

Scenario One:

50 emails were waiting for you today, a conservative number, and you cleared out 25 of them, leaving the other 25 to handle at a different time. Tomorrow there are 50 new ones. If you again handle 25 and clear them out, leaving the remainder for another time, you start with 100 on the third day. In a week, when you open your inbox, instead of the 50 that you began with that week, you now are looking at 225 things to make decisions about. Stress starts to build

nbox.

Each time you fail to make an immediate decision on what to do with a message, it becomes clutter, just as the stacks of paper that accumulate in offices do. This clutter is not only physical clutter but mental clutter, distracting you from the immediate tasks at hand.

Consider two ways that these accumulate. Start by imagining you left a totally empty inbox last night and that you receive fifty email messages a day.

Scenario One:

50 emails were waiting for you today, a conservative number, and you cleared out 25 of them, leaving the other 25 to handle at a different time. Tomorrow there are 50 new ones. If you again handle 25 and clear them out, leaving the remainder for another time, you start with 100 on the third day. In a week, when you open your inbox, instead of the 50 that you began with that week, you now are looking at 225 things to make decisions about. Stress starts to buil

tracting you from the immediate tasks at hand.

Consider two ways that these accumulate. Start by imagining you left a totally empty inbox last night and that you receive fifty email messages a day.

Scenario One:

50 emails were waiting for you today, a conservative number, and you cleared out 25 of them, leaving the other 25 to handle at a different time. Tomorrow there are 50 new ones. If you again handle 25 and clear them out, leaving the remainder for another time, you start with 100 on the third day. In a week, when you open your inbox, instead of the 50 that you began with that week, you now are looking at 225 things to make decisions about. Stress starts to buil

>

50 emails were waiting for you today, a conservative number, and you cleared out 25 of them, leaving the other 25 to handle at a different time. Tomorrow there are 50 new ones. If you again handle 25 and clear them out, leaving the remainder for another time, you start with 100 on the third day. In a week, when you open your inbox, instead of the 50 that you began with that week, you now are looking at 225 things to make decisions about. Stress starts to buil

e remainder for another time, you start with 100 on the third day. In a week, when you open your inbox, instead of the 50 that you began with that week, you now are looking at 225 things to make decisions about. Stress starts to build.

Scenario Two:

You receive 50 email messages today and deal with 25 of them but do not delete them because you never know when you might want to reference that information again. Therefore tomorrow you have 100 messages in your inbox as you start the day. You have to scan through all of them because some of the ones from yesterday may now require additional action, but you are not sure which ones. One week later you are facing 400 messages and dread the thought of having to work through them.

That is just the scenario for one week. Each day you have to scroll through the entire list and try to figure out if something needs to be done yet. Why not make a decision immediately on each piece of mail, moving it to the appropriate place for further action? It will eliminate that feeling of being overwhelmed as well as that sinking sensation of missing a deadline.

You have most likely heard the ad