If your email in-box is where you store your messages, or if you search for messages and cannot find them, take a few minutes to set up a filing system for your emails. It’s easy and once you develop the habit of immediately transferring or deleting messages, you will have much less email clutter and you will be better able to manage your messages.

First, learn to set up new folders. Usually under your “File” command, there is a “New” option, which leads to further options, one of which is “Folder”. When you select this, you get a pop-up window which asks what you want to name your folder, and gives you the option of where to locate the new folder. You can create whatever folders you need—customers, suppliers, complaints, advertising, personal, pending bids, and so on. Name your folders here the same way you name them in your paper filing system. If you do a lot of advertising and you have paper files for radio ads, newspaper ads, online ads, then name your email files the same way.

Once you have your folders set up, begin transferring your messages to the appropriate folder. The goal here is for the in-box to contain only new, just-received messages.

When you check your email, either file, respond (then file) or delete it. If you let it sit there until “later” you will just clutter up the box, and your mind will have a “nagging” because you left something undone. Even if it’s a newsletter that you don’t have time to read right now, but do want to read, move it to a file titled “to read”. Then, schedule some time daily or weekly to go through your “to read” file, and after reading, either file, respond or delete.

If your “sent” file is just sitting there collecting all the emails you ever send, clean it out, too. Then, consider doing away with the sent file and including yourself as a CC recipient for messages you want to keep. You can stop saving copies of every “sent” message by selecting Tools, then Options, then Send (depending on which email system you are using.). Just uncheck the option for “save a copy of sent messages”. If you use the CC method, you will receive a copy of the message you sent, then you can file it in the appropriate file.

In addition to filing your messages, unsubscribe to any newsletters and updates from sites you do not need. And, schedule regular times to check email so that you aren’t constantly checking for new messages while you are working.

If you have email friends who send every new joke, chain letter, funny picture and the like, it can be hard to ask them not to do so. If you just cannot do that, then set up a separate email address to give to them—either with your own internet provider, or through a free service like Yahoo! You can read and deal with these messages outside of your work or business email, saving you time and reducing email clutter.

You can also set up your Deleted Items file to empty automatically, either at a certain interval, such as each week, or every time you close out your email.

Last, but not least, make sure your email signature contains your name, business name, website, email address, and contact phone number and fax number. You can usually find this in the Options box, too, under signature or send options.