THEY say people with untidy, chaotic desks are more creative. Well, I must be very creative because I can barely see my desk beneath the piles of stuff covering it.

By ‘stuff’ I mean loose papers, several books, my diary, contacts book, folders crammed with papers, two mugs (one for tea, one for soup), a bottle of water, newspapers, a packet of Mini Cheddars, some peppermint teabags, my notebook, and a shiny crystal I think is meant to bring me calm and order (oh the irony).

Generally, I’m quite tidy. My home has a place for everything and everything is in its place. I think it’s because we grew up in a messy house (my mum left trails of half-finished sewing everywhere and her idea of tidying up was to shove everything on the bottom of the stairs and hope that we each scooped some of it up as we were passing) that my sister and I now keep tidy homes. But at work, no matter how much I try to clear my desk, it just accumulates more...stuff.

Then there’s email. Every morning I go through my inbox, deleting unwanted emails, filing some in a folder and dealing with the others in order of priority. Then another load of emails appears and I have 10 new ones to sort through. I get about 200 emails a day - roughly 70 per cent I don’t need - and it’s a juggling act deleting the junk and dealing with the others, while getting on with everything else.

It’s a familiar aspect of the working day, especially for those who work at a desk. But the spectre of hundreds (or even thousands) of emails hanging over us can take its toll on mental health. Emails can trigger stress, which, says an HSE report, causes up to 40per cent of workplace illnesses.

Recently I read about something called ‘inbox mindfulness’. I don’t really know what mindfulness means, but it must be worth a go. It’s not about checking emails 24/7 - it’s about putting aside part of the working day to keep your emails in a healthy state.

Tip 1 for ‘inbox mindfulness’ is: Going through emails first thing. If this fills you with dread, make a relaxing playlist, brew a calming herbal tea and tackle it email by email. That’s generally how I start my working day, minus the relaxing playlist (Enya or whale music at that time? No thanks).

Tip 2: Clear out the junk. Mass delete social media notifications, retailer newsletters and, in my case, irrelevant press releases. Tip 3: Get a nice folder system going. Thing is, while this tidies up the inbox, it creates a dumping ground elsewhere. A bit like the stuff my mum used to leave on the stairs. Tip 4: Archive emails you might need later on. See above (dumping ground). Tip 5: Colour categorise. Sorry, but the idea of categorising emails into red for those needing a response and blue for those that are done gives me a headache.

Tip 6: Unsubscribe from annoying promotional emails. Thanks to GDPR regulations, that’s easy. Tip 7: Set up rules. ‘In Outlook, there’s a tool called ‘Rules’ that can make emails auto-filter into a folder. Any new messages will be taken care of as per the rules you’ve created for yourself...’ (I lost interest at this point). Tip 8: Out Of Office messages for holiday time. But there’s still a mountain of them to tackle that first day back. I returned to 1,200 last time I had a week off.

Being inbox zen is a nice idea, but instead of one inbox you end up with five. Just thinking about mindfulness makes my temples throb. Where did I put those peppermint teabags..?