Organizing your online identity saves time, streamlines tasks and keeps you better connected

Goals for the new year typically involve getting in shape, saving money, becoming better organized or finally taking that tropical vacation. Whether you're interested in jet-setting around the globe or simply getting more organized, you should not ignore the role the virtual world plays in your everyday life.

For most people, the virtual world is the central hub where we manage several elements of our lives. It's where we confirm those long-awaited travel plans, track valuable shipments and stay more deeply connected to the people who matter most. Plus, now that we're signing up for more newsletters, daily deals and social media notifications, we're receiving more email than ever.

Here are few ways you can organize your virtual identity to accomplish your resolutions and goals in 2013:

* Organize your inbox with the help of a modern email service. The beginning of the year is a great time to clean out and organize those messages sitting in your inbox, and upgrading to a modern email service with smart and powerful tools can make this task less arduous now and in the future. For example, the new email experience from Outlook.com makes it easy for you to get and stay organized by automatically filing emails straight to a folder or category based on the sender's email address. The service, which connects with most existing email platforms and smartphones, also gives you the ability to delete all emails from the same sender in one click. Since Microsoft estimates that the average person received 14,600 email messages in 2012, anything that helps you deal better with a high volume of emails can save you significant time.

* Increase connectivity. With so many social networks it can be hard to keep track of your friends and contacts. Rather than hunting down updated addresses and phone numbers on all those different sites, use a service that aggregates all that information for you. By linking Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other networks to Outlook.com, you'll have an automatically updated address book, which saves time and keeps you better connected.

* Streamline online shopping. It's a good time to be an online shopper, with countless subscription services available to tip you off to great deals to be had. But these services can also clutter your inbox, which can be major cause of frustration as you strive to stay organized. Outlook.com is designed to manage graymail - legitimate email that you often receive in large volumes, but don't always have great interest in. The service can filter these messages into a separate folder and will automatically delete offers that have expired. If you ever get tired of getting a specific piece of graymail, you can simply use the one-click unsubscribe feature and never see those messages again. So if finding that perfect getaway is one of your goals for the new year, filing all travel-related offers in one place can help you easily track incoming offers and help you get the best deal when the time is right.

Removing clutter from your digital life can help you accomplish the broader goals you set for yourself in the new year. To learn more about how new email features can save you time and help you stay organized, visit www.outlookpreview.com.