It is the first day of the new year and unlike the days of old, I am not recovering from a hangover! Instead, I’m sitting in front of the computer going through the massive number of emails that inundate my inbox.

Being a writer and learning the craft, December is always a month where successful authors are doing competitions to help you improve and, don’t get me wrong, that’s great. What follows though—despite their assurances to the contrary—is an influx of emails offering you other services, promises not to do exactly what they are doing and trying to get you to join in writing groups that invariably will have you spending more time updating your progress than actually making progress.

Time to clear the clutter!

Emails by far, are one of the most time consuming things to deal with. Being a writer, you’ve probably subscribed to many other authors and writers, in part to get a freebie but also because some of the advice they were offering at the time was inline with what you were doing. Now it’s time to bring it under control. There are two ways that you can do this.

1. Use filters so the emails go straight to a folder so they’re not sitting in your main Inbox and clogging up the ones that you need to see and action.
2. Temporarily set your email to sort by sender. Go through the list and determine which ones are providing the most useful information to you now. Try to cut it down to a smaller number. Look at their websites and bookmark them if the content is still relevant to you. Then either create a filter to move all the others to a specific folder or unsubscribe from the actual emails.

I went from 23 writers to 8. Many that I culled had sent me a half dozen emails in a week. Some of them two or more in a day. If I ever get that bad, feel free to throw this post in my face and unsubscribe from my mailing list!

You still have a myriad of other options to follow what is going on. Facebook, Twitter, author sites, etc. but build in time to visit these sites as part of your working day. Set aside 30 minutes to an hour after lunch to chill and read through what’s going on. Choose a couple of different authors each day to keep it varied but also to prevent it from impacting your writing time.

What else can you do?

If you have a workspace, put some post-its on the wall above your computer. Make it clear what your targets are for the year. Everytime you look up, they will be there reinforcing your aims. If space is not an option, most computers have a message option as part of the screensaver. Type in the primary goal of your year. Make the most of your time, and if you’re not sure where your time is going. Track it for two weeks. Be honest though as you can only benefit if you don’t lie to yourself.

It is a new year, a new start and it’s up to you to make the most of it. What are you doing to make yourself more productive? Drop me a comment below and have a great year!