We all get a lot of email and it steals our time from us, in small and large amounts. Here are fourteen tips for saving time with your email.

1. Use more than one email account as a way of pre-filtering your email. Some people like to have one that is only for family and friends. Try having one just for anything you sign up for online.  You can also keep the load down by unsubscribing from anything you aren't really interested in.

2. If one of your addresses does start getting a lot of spam, don't hesitate to retire it.

3. If your email program has this feature, use the preview to read the beginning of an email. You can delete it if you don't want to read it. This can winnow a long list of emails down to almost nothing in no time.

4. How often do you check your email? The most effective routine is to do it twice a day, morning and late afternoon or evening, rather than popping in off and on all day to see what's new. If you are a morning person, don't waste that good morning time on doing much with email. Just glance at the headers and who sent the emails to see if there is anything that needs your attention right then. If not, catch up later in the day.

5. Do get your inbox down to nothing on a regular basis, whether it is daily or weekly.

6. When you read emails, go ahead and do whatever they require -- answer them, make a note to yourself of something you have to do, forward it to someone.

7. Use filters and folders to sort your email. For example, ezines you get could be directed right into a folder and then they could sit there until you wanted to look at them.

8. Filters are also useful if someone you know forwards dumb jokes to you. Your first line of defense is to ask them not to, but some people don't really respond well to that kind of request. Or if you actually do want to read them at times, filtering works great and keeps you from having to deal with them when you are concentrating on work.

9. Don't broadcast emails yourself to large groups of people. Too many of them will answer you!

10. In your own emails, sometimes you can say it all in the subject line. For example, if the time of an event has been changed from 2pm to 3pm, just say that in the header and then just write something like "See you there, Bill" in the email itself.

11. Take advantage of the tips and tricks of your particular email account. You'll find lots of way to organize better and do things faster.

12. If you get too much spam, consider shifting to gmail as it has excellent spam blocking. You can sign up for an account at gmail.com.

13. Create a sig file, or a signature line, that goes out at the bottom of each email you send. This saves your having to retype.

14. Take a moment and add new email addresses (that you want to keep) to your email address book.