Having a personal and legit email address is one of the things that is considered a must in this day and age. Looking back at the last 15 years, almost anything regarding the internet, school, work, play, and other aspects of life requires a person to have an email address. But what usually happens is that many people opt for a single email address and find themselves in a bind after a couple of years as they are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of email, junk mail, spam, and other messages cluttering their inbox.

What’s Wrong With a Single Email Address?

A single email address for school-related activities, work, leisure activities such as video games, and various spam-inducing products will cause your inbox to become an informational mess. Before you know it, you’ll find yourself having a hard time keeping track of all the information you’re being fed on the digital email platform of your choice.

The best way to go is to apply the inbox-zero method where you have 3, 4, or more different email addresses that you use for different aspects of life. These may include:

an educational email for college, grad school, etc,
a work-related email account,
a social email address to keep track of all the promotions, news, or any media-related articles,
and finally a leisure email account for video games, your Netflix subscription, etc.

If it’s too late for you to separate your main email address into a few categories, no worries. We still have a few tips for you that will hopefully make your inbox browsing a bit smoother. Keep reading to find out more about all the methods we recommend.

Tip 1: Try to Separate Your Single Email Address Into Three or More

This method takes up the most time as you have to start from scratch but it’s worth it, as you will find your inbox a breeze to browse through. We’re not saying that you need to create many faux-needs email addresses, three or more will suffice.

If you decide to go this route, you can name them for the purpose you created them for. For example, you can have [email protected] as your personal email for school or friends, [email protected] for games or other types of social media, and [email protected] for work.

Social Media Email Account

This email account should be reserved for video games, social media, promotions, and similar internet offers. You can categorize this email as a non-reply email and it will serve as a destination for the bulk of your non-important emails.

You can use this email address to sign up for newsletters, subscriptions, video game platforms such as Steam and Epic Games, and all of your social media platforms.

Personal Email Account

You can share this email address with your friends and family and also use it for school activities if you’re still in college or high school. School, friends, and family will be more than enough to keep track of at a single address. This is likely to be your first email address and when you finish school, the only messages you will receive in your inbox will be from your friends and family.

If you’re further in life, then this email could serve as the official email for your children’s schools, emergencies, or any family-related activities. You can also use it to communicate with contractors, caretakers, or any other temporary staff you might employ at some point.

This way your kid’s kindergarten won’t end up spamming you about that trip to the farmer’s market on your work email

Work Email Account

This email address should be protected from unnecessary spam, friends, or family-related information and should be reserved for work-only. Basically, you need to keep this inbox far away from anything not related to work to avoid distractions. This means that no newsletters, social media, video game platforms, Netflix, or other types of media providers should have access to the address.

Your work email account should only receive messages that are directly related to your work. That way you can easily keep your work inbox mean and lean, something that’s very important to your productivity and performance in your professional field.

How to Use Different Email Accounts

This one is pretty simple. Use your work email address when you’re on the job and check the other emails in your personal time. You can inform your friends and family that they shouldn’t expect instant replies and the same goes with any school or educational services. Maybe that distant cousin that always spams you with pictures from his travels will be disappointed but there is an unwritten rule that states “reply to work emails within 24 hours while friends and family can wait up to 72 hours.”

Following that, you should check up on your social media email address in your downtime, most preferably before going to bed or on your commute to work. Catching up with the latest news, movies, or video games is a great way to unwind after a hard day’s work instead of being bombarded with information every 10 minutes on a single address.

Another thing you should take into consideration is that you will use the same devices like your laptop and smartphone to read your emails which means that you will have to tinker with your email provider settings in order not to get overwhelmed and distracted by the number of email notifications.

If you cannot follow this method of separate email accounts for different activities, then check out the following tips to declutter your inbox and separate the different aspects of your life that are currently all crammed up in that same single inbox.

7 Tips for Organizing a Single Email Address

We like to keep things simple so this will be a 101 guide for organizing an email account for beginners. The reason for this is that there are many organizational email apps that you can use to sort out your inbox but they require a bit of know-how.

If you follow these simple organizational steps, then you’ll declutter your inbox in no time without the need for third-party apps.

1. Purge What You Don’t Need

First of all, release yourself from unnecessary emails. This means that you should delete everything that’s not close to relevant. Having junk mail from 2013 won’t do you any favors, just be sure that you don’t delete anything that you might need further down the road. Spare a couple of hours on your day off to calmly browse through your whole inbox and filter out unnecessary emails.

2. Archive Emails You’re Not Sure You Want to Delete

After you’ve read through all of your inbox messages, then it’s time to filter out the emails you’re not sure what to do with. This can be simply solved by archiving them into your email archives and keeping them until you find out if you’ll need them or not. If you need them, they’ll stay archived and if not, just click delete and move on.

3. Delete Automatic Newsletter and Other Non-Important Emails

These kinds of emails include newsletters, promotions, blog updates, Reddit posts, and other media that you are too busy to keep up with. They are designed to be tempting to the eye but most of us seldom manage to read through all of them.

You might feel guilty about that so you’ll say to yourself, I won’t delete them, I’ll read them before bed but pay them no mind. The reality of it is that these emails will keep piling up and clutter your inbox. Release yourself from that unnecessary clutter and delete them as the chances of reading them are slim to none.

4. Unsubscribe from Unnecessary and Promo Emails

The next step is to only subscribe to emails that you really want to read. If you find yourself deleting or archiving emails from the same subscriptions over and over again, chances are you don’t really enjoy them. Simply change your subscription preferences and let your inbox breathe a little.

If you’re subscribed to a mailing list involving discount coupons or other similar items, simply get the coupon or discount and unsubscribe. If you want to remain subscribed, that’s OK too, but remember, you don’t have to be.

5. Delete Group Emails That Aren’t Valid Anymore

Back in college, you might have held on to the concept of group emails for dear life, as they were likely the main channel of communication between you and your colleagues. The same might be true for a number of past jobs you’ve had. But, as time went on, your career path has led you somewhere else, and now you might have lost track of this or that group. They might still be active but they’re not that relevant to you. Simply ask them to remove you from the group or mute them. If it’s a distraction, then you don’t need it.

6. Forwarding Emails

Sometimes you will receive an email that you need to forward as it’s not really mailed to you. In instances like these, simply forward the email and delete it instantly. Takes only 2 seconds.

7. Set Up Folders

Having separate folders for emails is a great addition to your inbox zero routines as you can manually place every single email in a designated folder. For example, purchase receipts for online shopping can go into the shopping folder, family-related emails can be placed in a family folder, and you can create as many folders as you want.

Gmail is one of the best platforms to create folders as it’s very simple. If you’re using Gmail, simply head to your inbox and look at the left sidebar. There you will find the “Categories” prompt and under that, the “manage labels” and create “new label” commands. Labels is only a fancy word that Google uses for folders. Click on create a new label and move emails from that category into your folder.

A Few Words Before You Go…

We’ve shown you the most basic of tips on how to declutter your inbox as well as how to manage a single email account in every aspect of life. While we’re pretty sure that having a separate email address for every aspect of life is the best approach, having a single one is acceptable too.

The key to successfully managing a single inbox is establishing a good inbox-zero routine. Remember to purge your email once a week from unnecessary emails and to create separate folders where you can move your emails as that will make managing the email address a breeze.

8 Email Management Tips