I get around 150 emails a day. Of those 15 are actionable – 20 of them are informative, and 100 are approximately not useful.

Here’s my daily routine that I try to adhere to! I am only 50% successful in following this though.

Come into work – and go through all emails that are unread. I read from most recent to oldest – the reason being that I want to catch the most recent item on the thread rather than replying prematurely.

For every actionable item – I create an Outlook task and set a due date if the task is not immediately completable. If it is a short term task, I do it right then.

Once all my emails are read – I look at my outlook tasks and review them. I don’t go from the top to bottom, I usually take ones based on priority. Sometimes I will fall into a trap and avoid an action I know I need to complete.

I try to avoid checking emails except once an hour – I need to be somewhat response though since urgent situations do come into my email which require response time in minutes.

I try and work task one by one – it keeps me much calmer and focussed.