While email is a great way of keeping in touch, email overload can turn out to be your enemy when working as a freelancer. Constantly checking emails and replying only bring you more emails to respond to. Striking a balance between being available and getting your creative work done is difficult.
Set Aside Time For Emails
Inspired by David Allen’s Getting Things Done and a business mentor, I now check email in the afternoons once I’ve done a few hours of focused creative work first. This allows me to get my scheduled work done before getting distracted and fragmented with enquiries and small tasks.
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Use Separate Email Addresses
I recommend you set up various email addresses to separate the emails you receive. For example one for enquiries, another for project notifications, one for newsletters and other non-time sensitive information and one for support requests. You can then keep to one inbox if you need to focus. I set the support address to come to my phone and notify me so that gets priority and I see them out of normal office hours.
Write Emails To Reduce Back and Forth
The way emails are written can reduce the number of responses required to reach a conclusion. Offer choices and ask directly for things rather than leaving emails open ended. Another tip that saves me a lot of time is having a bank of canned responses to emails in Simplenote/Evernote/Whatever that I copy and paste when needed.
Inbox Zero?
We aim for ‘inbox zero’ (a term created by Merlin Mann on his now defunct site 43 Folders) and usually succeed in reaching around ‘inbox ten’. By using an online project management system and David Allen’s Getting Things Done method of ‘deleting, deferring or doing’ we can process email in batches and (mostly) clear the inbox. This stops things getting lost in the list and is much less stressful.
Read some tips on reaching inbox zero from Creative Bloq.
Keep Organised
I use folders for each client and then a folder for each of my own projects and organisations I deal with. This keeps the inbox clear and means I can find things when I need to.
Save attachments and delete them from the emails to save space in your email folders and mailboxes.