E-mail is a great way to communicate with others, but it can quickly spin out of control if you don’t organize all of your messages.

• Develop a system for reading, responding to and storing e-mail messages electronically. Set up electronic file folders to store e-mail messages worth keeping and label the folders clearly. Treat the electronic folders the same as paper files and regularly purge documents you don’t need again.

• Install a good SPAM filter. When you realize how much time you’re wasting deleting junk e-mails, you’ll be glad you installed a filter.

• Make it easier to know the difference between important e-mails and general e-mails by setting your e-mail to flag messages from clients and other key contacts. You’ll use this feature more as you get more e-mails.

• Avoid the urge to check your e-mail every time you hear or see that someone has sent you a new message. Instead, check your e-mail a few times every hour rather than every few minutes (unless of course you’re waiting for an important e-mail). If you have to check your e-mail every time you hear the alert sound, turn off the alert.

The key advantage to e-mail is the ability to communicate with anyone day and night. But that doesn’t mean you have to.

A personal assistant can help you save time and get organized.

Personal assistants can save you time and aggravation. In a recent post I shared insight from various folks working naked and using virtual assistants—same concept as personal assistants but virtual assistants handle tasks for others from their own home office.

Writer Sathnam Sanghera from the Timesonline posted an usual request for a personal assistant and ten people responded. He chose one of them to work with him so he could write about his experience.

Sanghera found that working with a personal assistant improved his productivity and that he was able to pass along tasks to his assistant with no problem. He even admits resisting the urge to ask his assistant to trim his nose hair (yuck!), but his request could have been worse!