If you have ever researched online posting possibilities for articles or press releases written by your company, you know some sites have dozens of newsletters you can register for, most of them daily. In most cases, they are time consuming and sometimes completely useless. If you monitor the sites your post on daily, then you already know which of the day’s topics are the hot ones.

But when you get to more than 40 sites that you hardly see once a week, newsletters can keep you updated on upcoming events, registrations for product and company awards, planned webinars and recently published articles. Still, 30 sites means at least 30 newsletters that are sometimes sent at the same hour and they basically flood your Inbox. So I thought of describing my way of handling the flood and keeping newsletter reading from rearranging my daily tasks. I am sure this is not news for those already handling such tasks, but I am pretty sure they can help those just starting.

First of all, register for all the newsletters you like. Sites like SearchEnterpriseLinux come with dozens of topics to select, so that you can get the information of real interest to you only. I did not choose this site as an example by mistake. I did so to also outline the fact that, no matter what field you are in, you should also make sure your newsletters cover the competition’s actions. Although dedicated to Linux users and fans, you’ll find that the site previously mentioned also covers Microsoft.

Now, how to get newsletters out of your way and prevent important emails from being lost among them? Most email clients allow you to easily create filters. So first create a special folder, then create filters for all newsletters. I for one use Thunderbird, which works like this: you right click the email address and choose Create filter from message. The subsequent options consist in a few clicks and you’re done.

Once your newsletters are redirected to a special folder, all you have to do is remember to take half hour each day and browse through them. You can skim the headlines quickly and then decide if any topic is worth reading further. If your day is too busy, postpone the task a little, but don’t postpone it for more than 3 days. Topics might get old and you might miss the chance of having a quick reaction, signing up for events, webinars and contests might not last that long and so on.

I’d also recommend to never underestimate the importance of keeping your Inbox clean of such newsletters. One might say creating the filters as the newsletters are received is time consuming and just drag and dropping them is easier. Well, if you have about 100 emails waiting for some action to be taken, selecting and moving emails might lead to little mistakes, such as overlooking an important task because it got moved along with not so pressing ones. Little time always leads to rushing into completing tasks and in such cases our attention tends to decrease. You could say my strategy is based on the ever-effective “Better safe than sorry” saying.

Hope this helps! Also please feel free to add anything I might have overlooked.