If you’re struggling with email overload, find your productivity is way down, can barely get through your "to do" list each day, here are six brilliant tips to manage your email that we have found work!

1.Only check email at certain times.

This is a huge one for most of us! While it’s tempting to leave your email program open at all times, that can be a huge productivity killer, depending upon your business. Obviously, if you are in client service, and most clients repsond by email, this is the LAST starategy you want to adopt! But for many people, you usually really don’t need to check every email the second it comes in, thus interrupting whatever task you were doing. Instead, set aside 30 minute blocks of time three or four times per day to check email.

Make sure those times aren’t when you are most productive! While it’s tempting to check your email first thing in the morning, this isn’t always the most productive. Instead, Brian Tracy suggests in his book, Eat That Frog, that you should look over your to-do list and find the biggest task that will yield the most positive benefits if you complete it now - and do that first thing in the morning rather than start off the day with email. Your email can wait. Use your most productive times to work on the stuff that matters most.

2.Delete liberally.

You can delete a considerable portion of your email before you even open it just by checking out the sender and subject. Scan both, and then ask yourself “Do I really have to read this today?” If the answer is no, hit delete. Don’t keep it around in hopes of reading it later - it will probably just sit in your inbox unopened.

3.Scan for action steps and deadlines.

Much of the email we receive can be classified as junk mail or notifications and doesn’t require action on our part. Look for email that does require a specific action that must be done within the next week or two and set these email aside. These should be your top priority.

If you work for a big company, it is highly likley you get cc copies from everyone, about everything. Most of which is useless from your point of view. See if you can set up your email for these to straight into files, rather than your in box.

4.Take action immediately.

If the email requires you to take action and you can do that action in less than two minutes, do it now rather than putting it off. It’s better to get things done quickly than to put them off until you prioritize everything.

Learn toompress the time from thought to action. This is the ultimate secret of success in business or your chosen career.

For action steps that will take longer, move the email to a prioritized folder so you can easily find it along with all the other action-oriented emails. Searching for buried email lost in a sea of unimportant email is a huge time waster.

FILE! As soon as you send it, if you need to keep it, move it immediately into the relevant folder! Don't wait, while you do another "urgent " job! Later, when you need to find something, these few seconds spent filing now will literally save you HOURS later searching for things.

5.Send concise replies.

When you respond, keep it as short and to-the-point as possible. Start off by summarizing the key point you are responding to and trY to cut and paste if possible, to save typing time, and add your reply, so your recipients understand your response in context, OR BETTER, ALWAYS USE THE REPLY BUTTON.

For instance: “Can you attend a meeting on Monday, June 16 at 3PM, at our office, where you will have the opportunity to meet with the Chairman, and also present your project to us. We can allocate 30 minutes to you". Great! Im available, look forward to seeing you then

You don’t need to write a book here. Limit yourself to a few sentences at most - or better yet, if you can answer the question in the subject line, do so.

And here is a bonus tip if you use a computer each day, and the "real secret" of productivity: not necessarly related to email: this tip is the one that will set you apart from nearly EVERYONE else:

Keep focussed: That is, stay focussed on your WORK and never, EVER be distracted by either an email coming in, with a "link", or by something you glance at on the internet that you think "that looks interesting" ...the internet is a wondeful tool, BUT is being proven to be the biggest time waster in history...we ALL know how easy it is to click on something to read "quickly", which leads to something else, and before we know it, an hour has gone, and we are behind schedule! Worst, we have lost an hour of our valuable working day, that can never be made up again! Its gone!