Let’s look at why having more than 1 email account per person is such a good idea to think about trying.
Most of the time it’s true that having one of anything is a good idea.
For instance – 1 diary will stop you double booking work / social / family stuff.
Although a lot of the time this can be true for email as well – there’s one major exception to the rule.
That’s why I wanted to write this post today, to highlight why it’s actually so important to have 2 email accounts.
Quick question for you – do you feel that your email is overwhelming?
Most people answer YES to this question – and the usual reason is the amount of emails that come into your inbox each day is a crazy number.
Most of these emails however are junk – irrelevant and unnecessary – but we still have to go through them all to find what’s important hidden amongst them, and this can waste valuable time and energy.
Where is all that junk coming from?
The main reason for all this extra junk email is that when you sign up for various newletters, or buy from online stores, or add your email to a variety of places online, then you are opening yourself up to your email address being sold on.
NOTE – Most places do NOT sell your email address (me included) but some do, and therefore it’s worth noting this as a possibility whenever you enter your details online, and being more aware of it
Before long you’ve got everyone emailing you whether you want them to or not.
What’s the answer?
To ward this off as much as possible, you need to be selective over who you give your email address to of course, but this can be almost impossible in practise because everywhere online seems to require your email address for you to do anything!
As such, the only way I have found that works well is a very simple fix – and that’s to have 2 email accounts.
#1 – MAIN EMAIL – For all important and personal emails
#2 – DISPOSABLE EMAIL – For your less important emails and signups
(and you may or may not have a separate one for work)
Your main email account will be the address you give to friends and family. It will be for people that you know and trust not to send you junk mail (as much as possible!).
Your disposable email account will be the address you can add to any online transactions you do with companies for signing up to newsletters, even purchasing items etc…
The beauty of this is that if this email account becomes crazy then you can simply close it down and open up a new one and start again – you won’t have lost your main email, and you won’t have to tell lots of people your new address.
By splitting the two like this, you will much more easily be able to see your important stuff, and also be able to keep on top of your main email accounts inbox (ideally keeping it to a bare minimum each day).
The non important stuff can be checked as often as you want to – but it takes the need away to check through all your junk mail each and every day. Any newsletters or product purchase receipts can be filed away in your disposable email, or you could even email them over to your main email account and file them there if required.
TIP – When you receive emails you don’t want any longer, there should always be an UNSUBSCRIBE option within the email which I would recommend you clicking on and unsubscribing when you have time, as this will start to reduce the amount of junk coming to you that you simply don’t need any longer.
ONE OTHER THING…. The other reason to have 2 emails accounts is that you often need a backup email address for when you lose your password etc… for the other email account.
Having 2 email accounts is a simple yet effective fix for a really annoying problem, and I promise you that you won’t look back once you’ve implemented it!
Do you already do it, or are you tempted to try it now?
I’d love to know, so please leave a comment below…