Overwhelmed by email? It’s not your fault.

Have you ever felt like the digital equivalent of those poor people on “Hoarders?”

We have all been there. Mailboxes are overflowing, and we’re getting overwhelmed by email. We’re dreaming of someday cleaning up all our email, but we know it will never happen.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by email, take heart. It’s not your fault. In fact, it’s not even close to your fault. Here’s why:

1. Email is poorly designed: A newsletter or a joke forwarded from a co-worker shows up in the same place as that urgent message from your biggest customer.
2. No Training: No one ever trained you in the best way to handle email. Most companies provide no training on how to prioritize, process, automate, and communicate clearly using email.
3. Spammers: The constant barrage of spam attacks undermines every other kind of communication you have going on, so you start ignoring emails on purpose… and never get around to reading them altogether.

The combination of bad design, no training, and constant spam attacks makes many of us want to declare “email bankruptcy.” We dread opening our email inbox in the morning.