Going through huge amounts of email everyday can be a monotonous task, especially if one gets lost in the shuffle. If you are constantly dragging your new emails into folders so you can keep things categorized, you really should be automating that. By automating this task, I have saved at least one hour per day, leaving my work days to more important things.

First you are going to need Mozilla Thunderbird, you can perform this same technique with Microsoft’s Outlook, but I will be focusing on Thunderbird. If you don’t have Thunderbird yet, you can go to their website and download it for free (http://www.mozillamessaging.com/thunderbird). If you haven’t used Thunderbird yet, I highly recommend trying it out.

Next, we are going to take a look at your folders, finding a way to automate new emails that are already in those folders, to go in there from now on. Locate the folder your most popular folder that you constantly place emails in, and let’s start there. Open up a text editor and copy and paste all of the email addresses that are in that folder (we’ll come to that later).

Fire up Thunderbird and go to TOOLS and click MESSAGE FILTERS (as seen in the picture below).

Tools --> Message Filters

You are now greeted with the Message Filters window, which is displayed below.

Message Filters Content Window

Now if you have multiple email addresses, you are going to have to change the email at the top of the box, in order to correspond with the email you want the filter added to. Now that you have the email selected, you need to click on the button labeled NEW. You are now greeted with the following window:

New Filter

The first field labeled “Filter Name” is going to be your label for your filter, so you can remember it later.

The next field is “For incoming messages that,” we are going to click “Match any of the following” (which should already be highlighted) and move to the next line.

Click on the drop down menu that says “Subject” and choose “From”. This is applying the filter to an email address. Leave the field “contains” alone and open up your text editor and enter in your first email address on the list. Now if would like more than one email to be filtered and stored in the same folder, click the “+” sign and do excactly what you did with the first email. Once you have all of your email addresses entered (remember we’re only working on one folder at a time), now it is time to tell Thunderbird what you want it to do with these future emails that you recieve.

The field that says “Move message to,” you can leave alone. Select the field to the right of “Move Message to” and find the folder that you wish to use for the filter.

Now press Ok.

If you own many email addresses, and emails that you would like filtered go to both of your addresses, you need to perform the steps over again for each account.

Now, for every email that you filtered, it will now automatically be inserted into the folder you assigned.

Congratulations, you have now automated one more task in your life and if you’re like me, you will be saving yourself a considerable amount of time. Doesn’t it feel great to have an empty inbox?

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Do you have any tips, suggestions, or add-ons that you recommend for helping automate email?

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I want to share with you some of my favorite tools that I use on a regular basis. These tools can help the business owner that finds themselves on the computer for a majority of their day, or even the occasional web browser looking to decrease the amount of time taken to accomplish a handful of tasks. Either way, I hope you take sometime to use them, if only once every other day. It’s great learning about programs and what they do to help with you next latest and greatest conversation, but if you use them and benefit from them, you’ll still be able to have that conversation while reaping the benefits.

1. Egg Timer

At times, we find ourselves becoming distracted from the task at hand and checking the new email, or the new comment on Facebook. This not only creates the problem of accomplishing a task, but also sends your mind in different directions, furthering you from this goal. You might look at Egg Timer as just a stop watch that does nothing more than keep time, but it’s more than that. If you use it right, it can help you become more productive. Say for instance, I need to get an hour long task finished sometime today. So comes that time, and I decide to start working on it. Now before I start, I open up Egg Timer in a new tab in the browser and set it for the time needed. By setting this timer I am allowing myself to know the amount of time taken and also helping realize I am “on the clock,” so to speak. So check it out, it’s free, and most importantly it will help you become more productive. Oh, and when the time runs out — you’ll know!

2. Jing

If you didn’t know about this already, you can capture a screen shot (or picture) of what you can see on your screen at all times, pressing the print screen button on your keyboard. While this is a great tool, what happens when you only need a portion of the screen shot, and not the entire thing? Jing allows you to highlight this portion of your screen and save it as a picture. Rather than opening up your graphics program and editing it to size, it is taken care of instantly.  While very neat in itself, it also allows you to take movies of the activity on your screen that you want to share with someone. So for instance, if you are making tutorial videos on how to use a certain program that you want to share with your colleagues (rather than resorting to showing them in person), you can capture the video and then share it with them. Although there are many programs that are similar, and it’s not a new technology by any means, Jing is by far the simplest, easiest screen capturing program I have came across.

3. Fireshot

Ok you might be saying, well I want to take a screen shot of an entire web page — something that extends farther than the viewable area. Fireshot is a Firefox add-on that allows you to do just that. When you are on a website, simply click the Fireshot button on your browser and it will give you a few options including, snap a photo of the viewable area, or the entire website. It has helped us share various websites with clients, sending them a photo of a website, rather than asking them to go there themselves.

4. Bubbl.us

If you haven’t had a chance to mind map, there is a free mind mapping ser

vice online at Bubble.us. Mind mapping can help you brainstorm and organize your thoughts into a visual format, rather than the typical roman numeral abbreviations. It’s f

ast, easy, and

helps you brainstorm without thinking about formatting your thoughts; press enter for a new category, and tab to create within the same category.

5. K7

Although I didn’t understand the potential of getting a voicemail service, it can be very beneficial (plus it doesn’t hurt being a free voicemail service). K7 gives you a free phone number that function

s as a voicemail, fax, or one or the other. They also allow you to create your own personal greeting. Having a voicemail can allow you to post your phone

number online, without the regret of receiving calls from spammers. Of course you will still receive those calls, but the number they are calling isn’t your cell phone number, and you can choose to call them back or not. And lastly, K7 allows you to check your messages on the phone, or even through email as they send the voicemail in an audio file (which you can opt out if you would like) or fax through an image. Brilliant.

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