Managing your email is an important but often overlooked aspect of keeping your agribusiness and personal life running efficiently. Email is often the means that you are informed that your bills are due, that your monthly bank statements are available, or that a customer (or your bookkeeper) is reaching out to you. It is important that you see the emails you need so that things do not get lost in the shuffle. Here are a few tips to help you leverage your time spent on email to help your farm/ranch be successful.

1. Set Aside a Time to Review Emails Regularly

When you wait too long to check email it is easy for things to get lost and you may miss important deadlines. It can also get overwhelming when you have too many unread emails. It is important to make time each day to check if there is anything that urgently needs your attention.

2. Don’t Check Too Often

On the other hand, you can get so consumed with email that you are sacrificing time and attention that could be spent doing more valuable things for your business or family. A good rule of thumb is to check in the morning and quickly respond to any pressing matters. If needed, set aside a longer time later in the day if there are things that cannot be handled quickly. Notifications can also be really distracting, especially if you are a person that gets a lot of emails. Try turning off those notifications instead. If you need help remembering to check, make yourself a daily calendar reminder.

3. Unsubscribe or Change the Frequency of Your Subscriptions

Your inbox can get flooded by emails that you do not even read but then have to spend time deleting. If you do not read the promotional emails or newsletters from a certain company, unsubscribe from their list (this option can usually be found at the bottom of the emails). If you do not want to unsubscribe completely, many companies offer the opportunity to change the frequency or type of emails that you get from them.

4. Review Junk Mail/Spam Periodically

Though most of the time the things in that folder are truly junk, there are times that an important message accidentally makes its way in there. Check periodically and add those contacts to your address book so that their emails go to your inbox instead. That folder will automatically empty itself every 7 to 30 days depending on your email provider, so you will want to find out that time period and check it regularly enough to catch any that were misdirected.

5. Use Your Account’s Features to De-Clutter Your Inbox

Most accounts have features you can utilize to sort your emails such as—Labels/Filters for Gmail, and Folders/Rules for Outlook. These features can be used to your advantage so that it will sort your emails for you as you receive them. That way you will know exactly where to look for them, rather than wasting time searching through your inbox.

What other tips would you add to the list? Let us know in the comments!

—Ashley DeVore, Executive Assistant

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