I’m venturing a little off-genre today. This might fall into the tips/advice area of commentary but I think it’s important because of the impact that something as simple as email has on our lives. It’s time to address something: You have too many email addresses. Well, you most likely do. Just about everyone I know has at least two that they view as interchangeable. Usually many more depending on how long they’ve been using email, how many jobs they’ve had, and how much they pay attention. Time to suggest ways to simplify.

This issue has me commenting due to some things I’m going through with a couple clients right now. Domain names were registered with now-defunct AOL addresses, old work email addresses, old ISP email addresses, or old addresses in general. I also have friends and family members who claim I haven’t sent them something or that I never responded to their emails. When I explain that I have, I’m told – oh – I never use that address. I wonder why I got the message from that address in the first place.

Have you experienced this? Do you do it yourself? How do we put our email world in order?

I have dozens of email addresses. I always have. Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, Work, those of my personal domains and websites. Yuck. I only use three though when it gets down to it. The rest don’t matter and I never check them or they forward to my primaries. I’ll explain my philosophy and let you consider if it would make sense for you.

There are three parts to this email address philosophy.

• One Work Email Address
• One Personal Email Address
• One Public Email Address

Here’s how they break down:

Work Email Address

This is the email address for where you are employed. You might not be employed there tomorrow. Don’t tie personal information or services to this email address. Are your bank statements and official personal information coming to your work email address? Stop it. NOW. If you no longer have access to that email account then updating information, verifying changes, or getting anything done with it is going to be hard or impossible. You’ll also spend less time doing non-work things at work.

Personal Email Address

Quite simply, this is where all your friends and family email you and where you handle all non-work things. Again, you should consider longevity. Are you using your ISP (Cox/Qwest/Comcast/AOL) for your email address? What if you discontinue service with them or switch? How do you clean that up? Do you really want to tell everyone you know they need to update their address book in order to reach you?

Use a free online email service like GMail, Hotmail or Yahoo. It’s free. You can access it anywhere. They do a great job filtering spam. Tons of storage. And they will be around for a long time regardless of who you get your Internet service from. You’ll have it for as long as you want to have it, or until they all combine into one giant entity of a company.

You can also register your own domain name (like MyDomainName.com) and then run email accounts off of that if you are more technically inclined. Then you are in charge of the email accounts for as long as you own that domain name. The control is in your hands, not someone else’s. No more, “my email address has changed…” messages to people.

Public Email Address

This is the one component of simplification that might not sit well with some of you but hear me out. Do you trust every site you register with to keep your email address safe? Do you trust them to not send you junk you don’t want? I sure don’t. So I have one email address that I use for EVERY online order, signup, registration, or form I fill out through a third party.  This way, I know exactly where that confirmation email is coming to, where to find that lost password request, what email address is used to log into any particular site, and where all the related junk mail is going. Not to my work address, and not to my personal address. Use another GMail/HotMail/Yahoo account for this one.

This public address might be optional for you. I prefer it this way. I sign up for and register with so many sites that I’d never see my personal email if all that junk was filling my inbox. This way, I can log in, sort by sender, delete the old stuff, empty spam, and be done with it. Need that Borders coupon? There it is. Print. Delete. Done.

The Verdict?

There we have it. A pretty simple approach to handling your email life and being in control of it. If you change jobs or ISPs there’s no reason for you to have to make everyone remember a new email address. Just upate your LinkedIn profile and everyone has your new work email address and information. Change ISPs and nobody will care – your address is the same.

Let me know what strategies you use for email mangement and what you think of this approach. For more reading about simplification of your email life and habits, Zen Habits is always a great read.

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