Last December, productivity blog Lifehacker polled its readers to determine their preferred tool for online collaboration. In an age of wikis, social networks, and Google Wave, it may surprise you that the early adopter-types who read Lifehacker chose e-mail as their favorite collaboration tool. The possible reason for this is that we’re all pretty familiar with how to use e-mail, whereas newer tools have learning curves we haven’t all tackled (yet). E-mail, though, can become an impediment to productivity if you let it. Here are five good ways to get your inbox in order and reclaim some of that time you use sending and receiving e-mail:

1. Achieve Inbox Zero

How many messages are in your inbox right now? Unless your answer is “none, Aaron!” then you have too many. Inbox Zero is a method created by productivity guru Merlin Mann to cut through e-mail clutter via the four D’s–delete, do, defer, delegate. For a few details, check out Amber’s post about Inbox Zero from last summer. Once you’ve cleaned house, make sure to pick up your nerd merit badge!

2. Use subject line rules

Sadly, searching for e-mail subject writing rules will return primarily tips on spamming marketing to consumers via e-mail. There are some good tips out there, though, such as these four ways good subject lines will make you more productive (basically, make them specific, accessible, and relevant); some more tips on good subject lines (concise, summarizing, “don’t tease”); and even some e-mail subject line protocols to really get productive.

3. Ditch the attachments

I hate e-mail attachments. The disk quota on my work e-mail account is quite low compared to what I’d get if I used Gmail or some other free mail service. A large PowerPoint file or video clip can lock down my e-mail account. Be considerate when sending attachments, especially large ones. Online services like Dropbox make it easy to safely share files via web links instead of attaching them to your messages.

4. Shut it off!

Whenever your computer pings or pops up a notification that new mail has arrived, what do you do? You probably drop what you’re doing, go over to your e-mail program, and see what’s new. If you don’t, you’re probably thinking about it. That’s distracting. My solution to this, especially when I’m working on something that needs my concentration, is close my e-mail program completely. I fire it up every few hours to check on incoming messages, process them as necessary, and then shut it back down.

I know that might sound drastic, especially if you’re addicted to e-mail. But give it a try. At the very least, shut off the bleeps and bloops and pop-up window notifications drawing your attention from your task at hand to your inbox.

5. Express yourself (clearly)

Last month, WebWorkerDaily published five ways to express yourself more clearly online. Clearer expression makes you a better communicator makes you more productive, because you’re not having to re-explain yourself.

What are your tips for getting the most out of e-mail? Share them in a comment below. See you next week!

Photo: S Migol on Flickr

Once you’ve uploaded a resource, add a few keywords to your description make it easier for others to find.  If you’ve got several organizers that are all related, assigning them the same keyword will allow them to show up together.  When you are finished, click Save Resource information.

You can also edit your own existing resources by clicking the edit button on the right side and then add tags.

To wrap up the series I want to touch on Facebook Pages. Pages are kind of like standard Facebook profiles, except instead of centering around people they center around companies, brands, and organizations. A page can have a message wall, photos, discussions, events, and other types of information depending on what Facebook apps you’ve installed (if you’ve ever played an online Facebook game like Farmville or participated in a survey or quiz on Facebook, you’ve used an app).

People can follow activity on your page by becoming a “fan.” When you post status messages to your page, they show up in your fans’ news feeds. This makes pages great for sending out information to people who may want to keep up-to-speed on what you’re doing. As mentioned in our posts about Twitter, we use TwitterFeed to automatically post links to new content in our blog.

Facebook also provides Groups. The Kansas Coaching Project and SIM Professional Developers have groups on Facebook. Unlike pages, status messages posted to groups are only viewable within the group, kind of like a Facebook-within-Facebook.

Groups and pages have overlapping features, which may be confusing. Tech blog Mashable has posted a good comparison of the two features’ capabilities to help you determine which may be best for you. They have also published the Facebook Guidebook online to help you get the most out of the largest social networking service out there. For us, KU (strongly) suggests using Pages instead of Groups.

Of all our social media presences, we probably reach the fewest via Facebook, even though many of whom I consider our core audience (SIM professional developers and the teachers with whom they work) use the service. We’ll promote our Facebook presence more heavily in the coming months, but generally speaking this is a good example of why it’s a good idea to push your message across multiple platforms, and let people choose the best way(s) to access your content.

This concludes, for now, our series on social media on a shoestring. As may be evident from this post, our approach is by no means complete. As the social media landscape adapts, we’ll have to do that same. Will newer technologies like Google Buzz take off? What–if anything?–will trump Facebook as the king of them all? If you’re waiting around for the dust to settle you’re in for a long wait.

I hope this series has inspired you to take another look at social media and how it can help you promote your ideas and causes without taking over your life. Even though I’m wrapping up the series for now, keep an eye on our blog for social media-related news and tips. Thanks for reading!

On Tuesday, David shared a number of photo editing tools to help improve your snapshots and images.

Did you know you can subscribe to RSS feeds of Depot groups? Amber showed you how on Wedesday.

If you’ve ever wondered what we mean by webinar, Amber explained it on Thursday.

Finally, on Friday, I shared some things I really like about the Pulse Smartpen from Livescribe, my new favorite gadget.

Have a great week!