I think everyone can agree that email is stressful. It’s surprisingly easy to let your email inbox keep you on a emotional leash without being aware of it. So I’d like to share with you the best ways I’ve found to fight back and keep email in its place (somewhere after maintaining general happiness).

1. Prioritize your email responses.

It is important to remember that you don’t owe anything to people looking to monopolize your time without paying for it.

2. Keep your work email and personal email in separate apps on your mobile device. I use the Mailbox app for work mail which has a nifty system for prioritizing emails, and the normal iPhone mail app for my personal email accounts.

3. Don’t enable push notifications for your personal email. This way you only have to deal with personal emails on the go when you have the time. I enable push notifications for work emails on my phone, but use mailbox’s option to only show a “1” flag for any number of new messages to cut down on potential stress.

4. Use the flag or star functions to mark important emails so you won’t forget about them later.

5. If your email load is truly immense, popping specific emails that you need to remember to respond to into a program like Asana can be helpful. This adds an element of instant gratification when you check off the ‘completed’ box for said email.

6. Try not to get in the habit of sending personal emails from your work account. This will just make things more confusing. If you’re working with browser-based email, keep your work account open in a normal window and your personal email open in an incognito or private browsing mode window.

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Eliza is the newest member of The Fetch team. Follow her on Twitter or her blog.