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How many emails do you have in your inbox right now? Are you an inbox zero freak like me? Or do you have emails piled up and unread that you’re hoping you’ll get time to get to?

I’m not judging – I used to have as messy an inbox as anyone. And even now, if I go on vacation or don’t check my email for too long, I can get in a heap of trouble: the email piles up, and it can be a real chore getting back to my empty inbox.

I’ve got a few tips up my sleeve though to make dealing with email a little less painful – and I’ve found the best defense is a strong offense. In this article, I’m going to give you some concrete tips and examples to reduce the number of emails in your inbox instantly – and help you keep it that way long term with the use of filters.

What Are Email Filters?

Email filter is like my own little army single purpose email virtual assistants. You tell each one to check each email for a specific set of things and then tell it a specific action to do with it. Some criteria you can check on include:

• Who is it from?
• Who is it to?
• What words are in the subject?
• What words are in the body?

Some actions you can typically take are:

• Delete it
• Mark it as read
• File it somewhere
• Send an automated response

I use GMail and I know Outlook (and most desktop program) have this capability, you’ll have to check with your webmail provider for how it’s done. With that brief introduction, here are the five types of emails I always filter.

1. Email Newsletters

Any blog I sign up for, any marketing email list – the very first thing I do after confirming my subscription is I set up a filter to automatically filter this into a “ToRead” bucket. I do this two ways:

1. Use the + symbol to make a unique email address. For example, if you are john@gmail.com, you also receive any email sent to john+newsletter@gmail.com. I use a similar strategy, so all my email newsletters are sent to a specific email account that is automatically filtered to a bucket to read later.
2. Filter by sender. A little more tedious, but you can set up individual filters for each sender as well.

2. Friends Forwarding Me Articles

I have a friend who constantly sends me political articles from a handful of websites. In spite of anonymously emailing them from http://stopforwarding.com/ as well as telling them in person, they won’t stop. I don’t want to filter all their emails, since occasionally they email me with something legitimate (a non-forward).

So I filter them based on sender and checking for a handful of websites in the body of their email.  I do this with a lot of people, and it helps separate the junk they want to send me from the real conversations we’re having.  Every week or so I’ll take a look at my “Review Weekly” and see these emails in there – and usually just delete them.

3. Comment and Ping Notifications on my Blog

I’ve got a full time job, and while I take my blog seriously, I don’t need to be seeing all the comments and trackbacks instantly. I try to get to them every day or every few days, but I don’t want them clogging my inbox.

I filter these into a folder that I try to review nightly – but if I can’t get to it nightly, no big deal. When I do get to it, I try to batch process them for at least 30 minutes at a time, visit everyone who has linked to me, perhaps leave a comment – and reply to the people who have been gracious enough to comment on my blog.

4. Facebook/Twitter/Social Media Notifications

I don’t need to know right away when someone follows me, friends me, directs messages me, etc.  I usually check social networking and media sites at least once a week anyway, and can process the notifications at that time.

For a while, I filtered all these and then checked them at my convenience.    For the most part though, now if I check the site often enough (like I do with Twitter and Facebook) I just turn off the email notifications altogether.

5. Store Promotions

I like hearing about the latest deals and specials, but there is no reason this needs to interrupt my normal daily workflow.   I looked at it, and realizedI might purchase something from one of these newsletters once a year – if even that frequently!

So I filter all of them into a “Review Optional” folder – and if I have time, I’ll browse them at my leisure. If not – no big deal, I just delete them every couple weeks.

OK, I Have My Filters – Now What?

Once you’ve created some of these filters, GMail (what I use) has an option to immediately run them on whatever you’ve got in your inbox. Use this to instantly filter low priority items away so you can focus on what’s important.

Going forward, your filters will be applied to any new email that comes in. This will keep your inbox clean so you can read the relevant, important emails first, before you head to your folders to deal with these low priority emails that may still be important to you – but don’t require as quick a response.

Sid Savara is a a lifehacking fanatic. Visit Sid's website for more information about how to get motivated and analysis driven personal development. Sign up for his newsletter and pick up a copy of his free motivational quotes book, The Little Book Of Big Motivational Quotes.

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Handset manufacturer Palm has updated its guidance this morning, indicating that revenues for the q

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We’re all meeting in San Diego this week:

It’s kind of pretty here. Shot from Torrey Pines State Park.

A look at the conference table during company wide meeting. Yes, even we meet once in a while.

REWORK is in the house. Everyone got an advance copy. The book comes out “for real” in two weeks.

Jamis brought peanut butter flavored marshmallows that he made at home.

Sam’s got one of the cool “Just Below Zero” colors of Field Notes.

We’re recording it all for the one team member who couldn’t make it.

Lots of tea gets drunk.

Arrogant Bastard Ale! David said he’s considering becoming the spokesman.

What the deuce?

In “Life, below 600px,” Paddy Donnelly talks about “giving the fold the finger” (i.e. making visitors scroll isn’t really THAT bad) and uses the 37signals home page to support the cause. “What I’m proposing is for you to think twice about these ‘rules’ which are preached so often around the web and aim to create something original.”

Some years ago I remember standing in my kitchen, staring silently at my boxes of cereal, trying to decide which to have for breakfast.  Was it a Frostie’s morning, or was it more of an Oat Crunchie’s day?  Or maybe granola?  I stood there for 5 minutes, until – utterly frustrated – I marched out of the house and went without.

Fortunately I’ve learned to make decisions more quickly and more easily now, and when I notice that second-guessing and doubting starting to kick in, I kick it right back.  So here are 5 ways to stop second-guessing or, of you prefer, 5 ways to make confident decisions.

1. Test them against your values.

So many times we have to make decisions without a framework and no way to judge between two choices.  When faced with a tricky decision it’s often a good idea to line up your choices and ask “Which one of these most honours the things that mean the most to me?”

The decision that’s most in line with the things that mean the most to you – your core values – will be the best decision for you.  That might not be the simplest or most practical, but because it fits with who you are and what’s most important to you it will always be the best decision for you.

2. Trust your gut.

When I was growing up I used to love rainy Sunday afternoons watching Columbo, especially the bit at the end where he’d sidle up to the Bad Guy, say “Just one more thing” and then proceed to blow apart the bad guys alibi.  Just brilliant.

What Columbo had bundles of was a great trust in his intuition.  In every episode, from the very moment he first meets the bad guy, he knows ‘whodunnit’ – and he always trusts that.

So look at what your intuition tells you is the ‘right’ decision for you.  Forget about all the “What if’s” and the myriad, tiny details – what is your gut telling you?  Listen to your intuition, it knows what it’s talking about.

3. It just doesn’t matter.

My decision between breakfast cereals wasn’t a biggie.  Whichever one I chose, there were never going to be any huge consequences and the ripples from that decision wouldn’t have been felt much further than the end of my spoon.  Sometimes it just doesn’t matter which way you go.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in second guessing yourself, going round in circles and over-complicating things, when – if you get right down to it – it just doesn’t matter. Going round in circles is only going to make you dizzy, so stop it.  Ask yourself this question – if your future happiness wasn’t dependent on your decision (and it isn’t, by the way), which way would you go?

4. Have enough information.

Go and get the facts before you make a complex decision.  By all means weigh up the pro’s and con’s so that you can get an understanding of what’s behind a choice.  But be careful – there’s a huge difference between knowing enough to make a choice, and knowing everything to make a choice.

When you feel yourself pursuing every fact or every piece of information before you make a decision, stop yourself.  Ask “What do I really need to know to make this decision?” and focus your efforts on getting the best information relatively quickly, rather than pursuing all of the information you could get your hands on given a longer period of time.

5. Respect your doubts.

We all naturally shy away from change, and we’ve developed a whole bunch of tricks that make it easy for us to avoid making decisions and stay exactly where we are.  That part of you is often called the “Gremlin”, and it’s the part of you that would rather avoid making decisions altogether rather than run the risk of making a bad one or screwing up.

Your Gremlin is not the same thing as having doubts, which are valid concerns about a possible course of action, or reasonable concerns about what might be in store. Your doubts can help you prepare for change and get ready for what could happen.

Your Gremlin is adept at feeding on your doubts and using them to get you to stay put, so knowing the difference between your Gremlin and your valid doubts helps you clarify what’s real and what’s imagined, what’s relevant and what’s irrelevant.

Steve Errey almost died at age 5 as he choked on a grape. Today, Steve is a leading confidence coach for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, with a reputation for talking sense and getting results. Read more at The Confidence Guy and follow him on Twitter. He still loves grapes, despite the risks.

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Earlier today, I was ousted as the mayor of the Google

Einstein said that all great original ideas at first appear absurd.  This is why it is so easy to dismiss radical suggestions when they surface.  We point out that they are absurd and so miss great opportunities.  How would you react if an unorthodox business idea was presented to you and you could immediately see problems with it?   Imagine that you are the boss in each of these situations:

1.  Spectacles manufacturer in the 1960s

Employee: I think we should investigate a new idea I have heard about called contact lenses.

Boss: How does it work?

Employee: We make prescription lenses that people attach to their eyeballs so that they can see well without spectacles.

Boss: You mean I stick a piece of glass onto my eyeball?

Employee: It could be glass or plastic.

Boss: That is ridiculous.  What if it slipped behind the eye?  What if it damaged the eye?  We could be sued for millions.  No-one is going to want something so dangerous and inconvenient.  Spectacles are safe, cheap and popular.  Let’s focus on doing what we know.

2.  Radio manufacturer in the 1980s

Employee: I read about this guy Trevor Bayliss who has invented a clockwork radio.  It is an interesting idea – do you think we should look at this?

Boss: Don’t be silly.  I heard about this too.  It will never catch on.

Employee: Really?

Boss: Sure.  Let me give you three reasons.  First radios need electricity and the easiest way to get that is through the mains or batteries – that is what consumers and the trade want.  Secondly the radio will have to be really big to contain the winding mechanism.  Third, the radio will suddenly stop in the middle of a programme waiting to be wound up – how annoying will that be?  Customers want convenience – not the bother of stopping to wind up a radio every 10 minutes.

Employee: I guess you are right.

3.  Website entrepreneur in 2000s

Programmer: I have this idea for a new social media site.

Boss: Great.  How does it work?

Programmer: People can make short broadcasts of up to 140 characters.

Boss: 140 characters!  Why restrict them?  Can they add pictures, music and videos?

Programmer: No – it is just a box for 140 characters of text.

Boss: Don’t be silly.  Facebook and Myspace already offer far more than that.  We need something more exciting than a text box.  How about we copy Facebook and add more features?

See how easy it is?  Every day in every organisation bosses are rejecting interesting ideas because the ideas look silly.  How can you overcome this problem?  You train people to ask questions rather than be judgmental.  When somebody comes to you with a bizarre idea do not find fault with it; instead ask questions.  How could we make it work?  What are the benefits for customers if this happened?  Is there a better way to do this?

If you want innovation in your organisation then you must encourage people at all levels to welcome, entertain and explore crazy ideas – they are the ones that can lead to breakthroughs.

Paul Sloane is an author and speaker on leadership, innovation and lateral thinking. His most recent book is The Innovative Leader. He helps organizations improve innovation, creativity and leadership. He is the founder of Destination Innovation. He has written 15 books of lateral thinking puzzles and hosts the lateral puzzles forum.Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/PaulSloane.

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