E-WORLD: Put your e-mails in three boxes.

from BUSINESS LINE, October 27, 2008 Practise triage for all e-mail messages all the time, advises Jeff Davidson in The 60 Second Organizer: Sixty solid techniques for beating chaos at home and at work (www.jaicobooks.com).

Triage is the method of quickly poring over a variety of items and allocating them based on what needs to be handled immediately, what can be handled later, and what can be ignored altogether, he explains.

"First, you want to eliminate the inane; this includes all forms of spam," declares Davidson.

After eliminating junk, proceed to "pick out which e-mails you can place in a holding folder, bin, or file." He cautions that some messages may be entirely worth saving but simply not urgent; for example, you may want to read at leisure mails from friends and loved ones, or those that don't insist on a reply.

"The final category is comprised of those email messages you receive that require immediate action," the author continues. "The number of messages that fall under this heading should be small." While some of these may not be urgent, prompt action may be …