Take a minute to think about your email inbox. Visualize it. Did your heart rate go up? A recent study conducted by the University of California, Irvine attached heart rate monitors to two test groups of workers – one with access to email and the other without – and found that those with email access had steady “high alert” heart rates. The group without email access reported feeling less stressed and better able to focus on the tasks at hand. Yikes! But we need our email, right? If you’re in real estate or property management, the answer is yes. From clients wanting to set up appointments to property notifications to contract updates, a ton of useful information lands in your inbox each and every day. So how can you shrink both your inbox and your stress levels? We’ve got three tips and three tools that will help you manage the constant influx of emails generated by today’s 24/7 real estate industry. 3 Steps to Optimize Your Inbox 1.    Priorities, schmiorities Having a strategy that allows you to sort your email quickly is key. Start by deleting the obviously unnecessary emails in your inbox. Are there emails you’d like to read later that don’t require a response, like newsletters or special offers? Create a folder with a title like “Read Later” and move these emails out of your inbox. Next, go down the list and tackle any email you can reply to in two minutes or less, no matter the level of urgency. Better to deal with minor concerns and get emails out of the way than to leave them lurking in your inbox until later. Finally, use your sorting filter to flip your inbox so the oldest emails appear at the top. Working backwards...