Skip to content

email help

How to manage too many emails

Most people receive too many emails.

Besides work email, if you are a parent, you will have emails from your kids' school and activities.

Maybe you participate in your religious community, and that will means even more emails.

Then, of course, all the email spam accumulated over the years.

Receiving too many emails can be challenging, stressful and it is a waste of time. And time is money.

Over the internet there are a lot of advice on how to manage emails, they are all well-meaning advice but they are all repetitive and not helpful.

Email advice

Unsubscribe from all the mailing list

The first piece of advice when managing too many emails is to delete all the promotional and spam emails.

Gmail does it almost for you with the new "Unsubscribe" button. The alternative is to search for promotional words like "Unsubscribe" in your emails and click on the unsubscribe button for all of them.

It does take a while, but it can be done. And it will make your inbox feel much more tidy.

However, the trick here is to do the work slowly and incrementally. Instead of sitting down and unsubscribe to everything all at once.

Next time you receive an email you are not interested in, instead of ignoring it, open it up and unsubscribe.

Going this way will make this process much less tedious and much more bearable.

Organize your inbox using labels

Labels are the way you should organize your Gmail inbox.

Filters are the way you should set labels.

If you are managing an email inbox that gets too many emails, let automation and filters do the heavy lifting.

Create filters to automatically apply labels to your emails. Unfortunately, it is not always possible, since it can be very hard or even simply impossible to create the correct filters.

The second best alternative is to just apply the labels manually, as you check your inbox, one by one.

It is tedious, you will likely forget, and your label won't work as well. But up to now, it is the best alternative.

Take care of it as soon as you read it

Taking care of your emails as soon as you read them is another great strategy.

If you need to answer the email, do it.

If you need to archive the email, do it.

If you need to take an action, do it.

But do it as soon as you read your email, do not park your emails for hours hoping to get back to them. You will not ALWAYS go back to your email, and you are going to miss something.

This is counterintuitive, but really helps when managing too many emails.

Reach Inbox Zero

Reaching Inbox Zero means that there are zero emails in your inbox.

It is a short momentary win, you will get a new email soon.

But as mental tricks, it works really well. The emails you will receive and the amount of work you will need to do, are always the same.

But you won't feel overwhelmed by it. And you will be, every time, so close to your goal of Inbox Zero that it won't feel too much of a chore.

It does require the patience to go through all your unread emails, read them, and act on them.

But it is extremely rewarding.

Get a virtual assistant

A virtual assistant is someone, that you pay, to do tasks for you.

One of those task can be managing your emails.

Your virtual assistant could read your emails for you and summarize them.

Or it could apply the correct labels for you.

It could as well drafting a possible reply to some emails that you just need to double-check.

A virtual assistant is a great solution to help managing an inbox with too many emails if you have a lot of emails AND the budget.

Besides being very expensive, virtual assistants are slow, it is still an human that needs to check each email. But they can help.

The new simpler way

Today, the best way to handle your emails is with an AI virtual assistant.

You get the same result of a virtual assistant, but at a tiny monthly budget.

GabrielAI is your AI virtual assistant.

Automatic summary of your emails

One of the most common tasks of a virtual assistant is to summarize emails.

If you are getting too many emails, this saves so much time each day.

Instead of opening each email, one by one, a summary helps in deciding ahead of time what needs to be done and what is important what is not important.

This also avoids getting distracted.

Imagine to log into your email inbox in the morning and having one email that summarizes all the emails you received during the night.

A single email to read, and then you are up to speed with everything that you should know.

After you decide which emails need your attention, you can focus on those only. Saving so much time.

GabrielAI implements this features for you.

Using GabrielAI you will automatically receive an email summary each morning.

Smart Filtering

Email filtering is very hard to get right, but it is fundamental when you are managing too many emails.

Email filtering is hard because it is based on very mechanical comparisons.

If the email is from the address: [email protected]

Or if the email contains the word: "Invoice"

Or if the email has a subject with the word: "[New Sales"

These are the classical emails filters that people can use.

Those email filters help in cleaning up, and removing the noise, but not really in organizing the inbox.

For organizing the inbox you need semantic filtering.

If the email is about project "Alpha"

Or if the email is about school activity for Jason.

Or if the email is about the request for fundings.

It is not simple to filter for those semantic filters, you cannot use word match anymore.

This is where a virtual assistant helps. A virtual assistant can apply judgment and "smartness" to an email, and decide in which category it belongs.

With GabrielAI we don't need anymore a virtual assistant, we can just use an AI to automatically manage all of this.

Just describe to the AI which email should be filtered. GabrielAI will apply judgment and apply the correct labels to each email.

In this way, you will keep your inbox not only tidy but also organized.

Auto drafting

Another trick to manage your emails when you receive too many of them is simple. Do less for each email.

Instead of spending time to reply to each email, let your virtual assistant create a draft for you.

You can just review the draft, adjust it, and send it.

Much much faster than writing everything from scratch.

If you teach your virtual assistant how to do it, they will happily write your draft for you.

GabrielAI already implements automatic drafting. You just describe how Gabriel should reply to your emails and it will automatically create a draft for you. The draft will be ready a few seconds after you receive your email.

In this way, you will have much less work to do and it will be much simpler to manage your inbox.

Conclusion

There are many tools, ideas, and techniques to manage an email inbox when you receive too many emails.

The most efficient way is to get a virtual assistant, but they are too expensive and slow.

With GabrielAI you get the same benefits of a virtual assistant, but it is cheaper and much much faster. Always working for you.

You will wake up in the morning with an email inbox well organized and ready to get done with the important work.

You can try GabrielAI today.

How to sign-off an email

After you write your professional, clean, precise emails.

Or after you let GabrielAI automatically write that email for you, following exactly your input, using our Auto drafting feature.

It is now time to sign off your email.

Before diving into the several possibilities, it is important to understand why we sign off emails.

Why sign off emails

Sign-off emails act as a clear break of communication.

It signals the reader that you have terminate the communication and that they should not expect anything else from you at this time.

However, the correct sign-off will signal to the reader your expectations from them.

Do you expect them to just read the email?

Do you expect them to reply to your email with some information they have on top of their head?

Are you starting a conversation that might or might not need a reply?

Do you expect them to take some action?

Should they be happy? Worried? Relaxed?

Signing off your email can change the tone of your whole email.

It should be done carefully, to avoid a very friendly email ending in a scary way. Or a worrisome email ending with a false positive note.

Signing off routine emails

Most emails are just standard business communication.

You may ask something that the other party is suppose to deliver. Or they may ask you something that you are supposed to deliver.

In a routine communication, a simple "Best Regards", or "Warm Regards" is a perfect sign-off. Simple, professional, expected.

Some emails sound routine emails, but they are not.

For instance, if you are helping a client solving a frustrating problem.

The other party will feel frustrated, in a hurry, will wonder if it is a good idea to keep your firm as a business partner.

In cases like this, we suggest a more personal touch. "I will update you as soon as possible!", or even "As soon as I have news I will update you".

It must be calibrated with how serious is the issue and the problem.

Status report

Sometimes you may want to send a status report to a wider audience.

Sign off the email telling when the audience should expect the next status report.

Does not need to be precise but it should give the audience an idea. It might be around a date, or around the completion of a milestone.

"Please expect the next report by the 7th of May" or "I will report back as soon as Milestone 5 is completed" or again "We expect to complete Milestone 3 by Q3, please expect updates shortly before."

Express disappointment

It happens that over email you must express some sort of disappointment.

You were expecting an important document by a specific date, and the deadline is now over.

You have been passed over for an interesting piece of work?

Some line of work that you depend on was not completed?

In a professional environment is important to not get emotional, even - especially - if it is important for you.

Nevertheless, if you are replying to those emails, it is important to express the correct emotion. They must know that it is not ok.

A dry "Regards" or just "Best" or even nothing or a simple "-" is usually enough to signal a serious and worrisome tone.

Keep it professional, but make sure your message comes across.

Ask for an action

Sometimes you need the other party to take some action. Maybe the creation of a report. Or sending over some file. Or checking some data.

The message should be clear in the email body, so even without reading the sign-off people should know that you are expecting them to do something.

However, it is important to communicate clearly also on the signoff that some action is required.

Depending on the situation and the ask you may ask when to expect updates, or you may ask if they are questions.

For instance: "When can I expect some updates? Best regards," or similarly "Let me know if there are any more questions" or again "Hopefully there are not question anymore"

Beware that those signoffs can come out quite strong.

Propose yourself

Sometimes you want to propose yourself for a new position, a new line of work, a different role, a PhD position, a lease, etc...

Those emails can be signed off with a simple "Respectfully" to signal your respect toward the organization to which you are proposing, in a very formal sign-off.

Otherwise, a more friendly and low-stakes approach could be "Waiting on news from you", or even "Hoping on positive news from you".

More relaxed environments

Sometimes emails can be used also in less professional environment.

If you routinely email your best friend in the office, you can terminate with a simpler "Cheers!", or also just a ":)"

No one is going to check those emails or judge you by them. Go crazy and have a laugh.

Not that big of an issue

We went through some sign-offs for your email - but remember those are not such a big deal.

The content, tone, and the whole email overall are definitely more important than just the sign-off.

However, the signoff can re-iterate your point in your email, making your email clearer and communication more crisp.

Don't be afraid of a strong signoff, sometimes it is needed.

Never get an email wrong with GabrielAI

If you have read so far, emails are a big part of your work and you want to get better at them.

GabrielAI is a tool to help you manage your email inbox, saving time on each email! Everyday!

It is your email assistant helps declutter your email inbox, keeps it clean, and automatically creates drafts for the most common emails (with the correct sign-offs).

Finally, it also sends email summaries so it is easier to stay up to date on anything.