Devoted to small businesses and those who run them

I asked Small Biz Mentor readers - Is Handling Email Your Badge Of Busyness?

It seems we can all identify with feeling like we live in our inbox sometimes, and there was a lively discussion.

Karen Swim

...I could totally go without email for a day! I actually find that I have cut way down on creating email. Sometimes a phone call is quicker and avoids multiple emails. I read of an office that had no-email Fridays and productivity skyrocketed. I bet many of us could benefit from that tip.

YES... Email is a terrible pain... and I find myself occasionally looking mighty busy deleting tons of spam lol... 

Uh Oh! I never realised it before Yvonne...but I'm addicted to email.

Sherri summed it all up for us 

Most email in all my inboxes gets deleted based on sender or title, if it didn't make it into my bulk folder to begin with.

All bulk mail gets a very brief glance for legitimate mail that ended up there, then it all gets deleted.

I try very hard to keep the number of emails in my inbox to under 50, and those are all emails pertinent to my daily work, work as in actually accomplishing things.

The recurring themes seem to be too many emails and trying to cope with them. Our primary concern is not receiving emails, but deleting them - crossing them off the virtual list, so to speak.

If we feel that way when checking our inbox, making sure your email has a chance of being read is even more important. Do you use a clear descriptive email subject line?

Merlin Mann in his excellent video about Inbox Zero talks about the "old" days when so few people were on email, that they were like virtual hugs. Virtual hugs have now turned into virtual noise... not all of it completely necessary.

• How do you manage your email deluge?
  
  
• Are you trying to send less emails?
  
  
• When do you use the phone or other communication instead?