You’ve probably tried tons of services or apps to help you manage your inbox. After all, you do have a life outside of the internet right? You want to get in and out of your inbox as quickly as possible. And you wish those emails would stop piling up. Here are 5 quick tips that you can do right after reading this post to better manager your inbox.

DIY: Manage Your Inbox

Make A “Things To Do” Folder or Label
Another label, Corvida? No! This is where you put emails that require you to do something beyond a simple reply. This could be an email with PDF or newsletter guidelines to an invoice. This is about getting emails out of site, right now. Now get to work on those delegation muscles.

Know When To Resist Taking Action
Don’t be alarmed as your to-do folder grows. When you feel the need to take action , resist it. Unless you’re on a deadline of yesterday, you’ll better benefit from finishing your inbox first. You can better prioritize your tasks once you know what they are.

Set Filters For Specific Emails
Let your email client do some of the work to help you with prioritization and inbox management. Set filters that automatically archive and label specific emails. Filters can be set for friends, blog related emails, or all of your social media notifications. This can give your delegations muscles a break.

Start using social media back channels
Instead of emailing everything, try sending quick questions via DM or Facebook. Use your phone a little more where possible. This helps keep your inbox clear and focused on more long-term communications.

Unsubscribe from everything
You can take a bigger load off of yourself by simply unsubscribing to the subscriptions you just don’t read. This was talked about in the section above, but just in case you missed that, go back and read the newsletters item. You don’t need newsletters flooding your inbox.

What’s Working For You?

The last tip took away over 50 emails I received per day!

• What are some of your inbox management techniques?
• Are you using any software to help you?

If you’d like more tips for clearing your inbox, Leo Babauta has 20 more on the Zen Habits productivity blog.