I don’t know anyone who wishes they got more email. Everyone gets too much.

If you are tired of getting buried, follow these 6 steps.

1. First, never check email unless you have the time and energy to deal with it.

If you must break that rule because you are expecting something critical or you need to know if something has blown up, then announce to yourself that you are going to glance quickly. And then just glance. Read nothing except messages from critical customers, announcements of disasters, or something clearly connected to the reason you needed to take a peek.

Return to your email later with you have the time and energy to actually deal with it. Then, move methodically and touch each email only once.

2. Can you deal with it in less than a minute or two?

Then do it. Respond to appointment requests. Provide succinct answers. Promise an answer later. Confirm receipt. Say no. You must be ruthless in this — and decisive. Even two minutes per email can suck up an awful lot of time over the course of a day.

3. Does the email apply to one of your top 3 priorities?

If so, make a note or file it wherever you keep the materials associated with the appropriate priority so you can take it into consideration once you are ready to work on that project. Avoid shifting gears and getting involved in a project you had planned for later just because someone else decided now was a good time to drop into your inbox.

4. Does it supplant one of your top 3 priorities?

If an email proves to be more important than one of your top 3 priorities, make a conscious decision on how to accommodate this new task. You have five effective options out of six overall. Unfortunately, most people choose the only ineffective method of dealing with overload.

5. If the email does not apply to one of your top 3 priorities, does it apply to a known, defined project soon to be on your top priorities list?

If so, then treat as you would your top priorities. Add a note or file it with the materials associated with the appropriate pending project so you can deal with it when the appropriate time comes and not before.

6. If you have 3 top priorities and a list of pending projects and an email arrives that isn’t connected with any of them, why wouldn’t you delete it?

Don’t just leave messages in your inbox thinking you will get back to them later. Who are you kidding that you will ever have time to get back to this constantly growing stream.

OK, suppose we are talking about my newsletter. I wouldn’t want you to delete this! 🙂 If you’ve noticed that it arrives at 10:15 on the last day of the month, you may have time reserved to read it the minute it arrives. Somehow I doubt it. So, either read it in a minute or two, or file it with the other things you’ve scheduled to read at a designated time — on Friday afternoons or your next flight home, perhaps. But if that designated time is not blocked off on your calendar or a standard part of your routine, you are fooling yourself! Schedule time for professional development and your personal priorities, or they won’t happen.

Email can drown you.

A full inbox is mentally taxing and it consumes unnecessary time and energy every time you look at it and agonize over what to do with all those messages. If an email isn’t important to defined priorities or important enough to shift those priorities, it needs to be scheduled or deleted. If you let email pile up, there are three likely outcomes, none of them pretty. Furthermore, you might succumb to all three at once.

1. A growing quantity of messages festers and drives you crazy.
2. You spend more time fighting your inbox than attending meetings—now there’s an awful thought!
3. Your inbox, or should I say your in-decision-box, becomes your To-Do list and you become driven by the least strategic force in the organization: random email, many from unimportant sources.

Of course, all of these steps require clear priorities and a good sense of pending projects so you can make those choices. Clear priorities, clear objectives, and a clear process for handling the flood of email are the secret to peace of mind and productivity.