AFTER READING THIS ARTICLE YOU WILL NEVER HAVE MAILBOX STRESS AGAIN

(Kiki the mail junkie knows it)

Are there more people with four mailboxes? Then you immediately understand my problem. On some days I suffer from thick, thick mailbox stress. One email after another keeps rolling in and I feel like I barely get anything done all day because I'm just rummaging through those emails. Recognizable?

A study from the University of California shows that employees who occasionally ignore their work email have less stress and can concentrate better. Now that sounds quite logical, but the fact that you change screens an average of thirty-seven times (!) per hour when your mailbox is open is quite creepy. Is it any wonder we can't get to work!

Experiments even show that busy email traffic keeps you in a constant state of alertness and can even lead to an accelerated heart rate. Only when you completely close the mailbox do you need to multitask less, your stress level decreases, and your normal heart rate returns. You understand that I dare not open my mail for the rest of the day...

So maybe the perfect New Year's resolution: prevent unnecessary email stress. 6 tips for an empty inbox in 2016:

We have the habit of saving emails with the idea ‘I'll look at this again‘ or ‘I might need this someday’. You will stop doing that from now on. Delete emails that you can't do anything with right away.

Choose a maximum number of times per day that you will check your mail. Three times a day is really fine for most people. Keep your mailbox closed the rest of the time and turn off any email notifications.

So do NOT respond immediately to everything. Do you find that difficult? If necessary, put in your email signature that you read your email sporadically and if something is urgent, they should just call you.

I recently got this tip from a friend: after a long vacation and in a dire need of mailbox stress, DELETE EVERYTHING at once without looking. Eyes closed and click away, holy shit. Her argument: “If something is really important, they will email you again.” I find that quite intense, I must say. But on the other hand: how important do you want to make emails? The majority that comes in is just nonsense.

At the moment you take the time to work through your mail, keep these four categories in mind: 1. Delete (uninteresting mail), 2. Handle immediately (all important emails that can be answered in less than two minutes), 3. Come back to later (emails that are urgent but require some calm time) and 4. Forward (do it immediately, then you're done with it. And also delete it from your own mailbox right away.).

Unsubscribe from all that damn spam. I even have - even worse - a spam email address for newsletters. A quick look there shows me that I receive over thirty emails a day from, among others, Groupon, Groupdeal, Uitmetkorting.nl, Actievandedag.nl, Travelbird.nl, and I could go on. And now I'm going to unsubscribe from everything. Enough.

Written by Kiki Düren