Tim Ferriss, best known for authoring The 4-Hour Workweek among other self-help books, deals with thousands of emails every day. Even on the worst of days, I barely have 100 emails to get through and that still takes up a ton of time. How does Tim Ferriss do it?
As it turns out, he has a few tips and tools that can shave off a lot of time.
- Boomerang -- A service that integrates with Gmail and allows you to schedule automatic follow-up emails according to certain parameters that you set, and it also allows you to schedule emails to be sent at a future time.
- The Email Game [Broken URL Removed] -- A service that prevents you from looking at your inbox. Instead, it forces you to deal with your emails one by one and doesn't let you ignore them. You have five seconds to decide what to do with an email, and if you want to reply, you have three minutes.
- Star and Archive -- Every so often, go through your inbox and Star any that are important, then Archive the rest. This is a great way to reach and maintain "inbox zero."
Between those three tips and tools, Tim Ferriss can get through all of his emails in record time. Note that this advice is helpful even if your daily influx is only 100 or even 10 emails, but it's obviously more valuable when you have more emails to chew through.
In addition, you should check out these tricks to become a Gmail power user, these tips for reducing email stress, and these important email security tips.
How do you deal with massive amounts of email? Know of any specific tricks or services? Share your thoughts with us down in the comments!