If you’re anything like me, you hate having unread emails in your inbox. I know it’s a trivial thing, but it just feels so much better to have a zero in the unread column.

And yet I still manage to forget to reply to people that I really should. I still read emails and make a mental note to reply to them later, but never get around to it.

My solution? Use the ‘mark as unread’ function. I’ve started marking emails I’ve read and need to reply to as unread, and leaving them as such until I’m ready to reply to them.

This gives me enough incentive to get out a reply, and means that I now do a better job of getting back to people (at least in theory).

(Also, a reminder to periodically check your spam folder. I recently almost missed an opportunity to appear in a magazine article, more on that in due time)