All I want for Christmas is a break from email

With the holidays around the corner and most of us taking time off, you will certainly have a full inbox waiting for you when you get back. Probably about 70% of the waiting messages would have been taken care of already, and many more will consist of newsletters, alerts, some spam, or emails that really don’t concern you directly, but you were copied on them.

I know it’s annoying to come back to an inbox full of emails to sort through. Recently, I was gone for only one week and discovered that some glitch caused all my Outlook rules to disappear. When I got back I had – no joke – between 1500 – 2000 emails to go through. I was furious: it took me about 2 ½ hours to sort them all! Yes, there were some old alerts and newsletters, but I still had to check through them to make sure I didn’t delete anything I really needed. After thinking about it, I realized how many emails I actually received and how my old, simple rules had helped me save time. How annoying it was to try to remember the 5-10 rules and to have to set them up all over again.

If simple rules can help me, imagine what an add-on to my mail client could do. It would actually decide which emails are important and need immediate attention, and which ones can wait. When I get back from vacation, the waiting email would be nicely organized and prioritized for me, and I wouldn’t waste 2 ½ hours going through them all.

So, learn from my experience and remember that email never takes a holiday. Set some rules before you take your leave, or better yet, start looking for a plug-in that can help you and others in your organization save time when you return from the holidays.

Have you experienced a similar situation? Share your experiences with us and what you would like your email client to do for you.