I’ve noticed that when I get stressed at work, it’s often because my email inbox is out of control. I’ve got hundreds of unread emails, with no idea which ones are important. I finally decided I needed to learn how to be much more effective with email, so I came up with a few strategies.

I created a few simple rules to keep me on top of the madness, and here they are:

1. Check your email twice a day, but never right when you get into the office.
2. Mark important emails with a star or label.
3. Mark other emails that require a response (but are not urgent) as ‘Later’.
4. Archive them all to clear your inbox.
5. Finally, master keyboard shortcuts to make answering and writing email much faster.