I was recently out of town for a few days for my sister’s wedding. As any responsible business owner would do, I checked email occasionally – using my Blackberry.

But here’s the thing: I purposely do not have my email dumping into my phone automatically (And this is something I strongly recommend to many of my Crackberry-using clients). So my email does not chase me when I’m away from my office – I have to purposefully seek it. And I usually only do that when I’m expecting something important.

To see email using my Blackberry, I log onto the GoDaddy server that hosts my email – this is where my email lives before it dumps into Outlook. (And in Outlook I’ve turned off the auto-send/receive function, so I have to tell it when I want to see email. Until then, it stays in GoDaddy-land, accessible via the web).

Make sense? Have I lost you yet?

So when checking my unfiltered email online during that trip, I was thrilled to discover that due to the effective “rules” and junk-mail filters I have set up in Outlook, that I usually only see 40% of the email being sent to me. Yes, this is a good thing! 

When checking my unfiltered email online, I was overwhelmed at the amount of junk, and other interesting but not- vital email that I receive. If that was everything I would have to filter daily, I’d be spending twice the amount of time and energy on email. No thank you!

What rules or filters have you set up for your email?

In Outlook, you’re just a right click away from setting up a rule on any email that comes in your box. Tired of all that junk mail? Don’t just send the email to junk, but take a second, right click and make them permanently go to your junk mail. The good news is, you can quickly scan your junk folder any time and make sure you’re not missing anything vital.

Trust me, you won’t be.