To completely stop email overload, you need to tailor a complete organizational solution; you can get some ideas for that on my site. But I find that many people derive value by implementing some simple individual measures, and I often get asked what the best of these are.

So here, for your enjoyment, is my favorite first tip, the one you should take if you were to take one tip  only to the proverbial desert island (assuming they had WiFi on the island):

Only check your email in preset time slots each day.

This seemingly obvious idea is actually powerful medicine. It directly attacks the Inbox addiction that makes countless people check for new messages every few minutes around the clock; which removes a major source of interruptions from the hectic lifestyle of this “age of the Blackberry”. This empowers you to focus your mind and work on creative action. It also saves a significant amount of time, since doing work in short chopped chunks adds up to 40% to the total time they take.

There are two technical details to this. First, there’s the question of when in the day to do the email processing? That is really up to you. A good idea is to steer clear of the times when your biological rhythms render you more creative. Then there are considerations of work rhythms: if you interact with a distant time zone, you may need a mail check first thing in the morning. But the main thing is to have a few (1 – 4) fixed, preset slots and to have the self-discipline to stick with them.

Second, you must stop the incoming messages from coming after you! This means removing all the alerts that announce new email arrival: the audible beeps, the “toast” message boxes (so called because they pop up like bread from a toaster, at least in Outlook), the little envelope in the task bar, and so forth. These can be turned off in your email Options – better go turn them off right now!

Are you already doing this? If so, share your choice of times and your experience in the comments.