I’ve been on a rulemaking binge lately, and I’m loving it. And you just might be surprised how a few little rules can simplify your business life.

I’m talking about Outlook Rules. While lots of people have Inbox Zero goals, that doesn’t work for me. But having 150 random items piling up isn’t helpful either. So recently I got serious and created a Subscriptions sub-folder in my inbox. I then built rules to move every SmartBrief, Financial Times, MarketingProfs, LinkedIn, Groupon, Sporting News, and other subscription automatically out of my inbox and into that new folder. Now the mail I need stays at the top, and the rest is there to dig in or delete when I’m ready.

Sometimes you just have to have a few rules. What rules have you created to improve your productivity?

Photo by Entressen kirjasto (Flickr).