I’ve had the same email address since I got married in 2002. That translates into 10 years’ worth of various lists, charities, worthy causes, friends and acquaintances who all have my email address. That means that I average well over 100 emails per day. And that means that I really can’t efficiently keep up with my email. A lot of email comes through my inbox that I never open and sometimes email that I would have liked to open gets missed because of the sheer volume of email…
Somehow, I suspect I might not be the only person in the universe overwhelmed by email.
This morning I had over 1,000 unread emails in my inbox. (That doesn’t include the emails I’ve read that are just sitting in my inbox.) That is way too much.
So today, I did the unthinkable.
This morning it occurred to me that I am never going to go back through old emails. There is nothing in that pile that I will ever, ever want to read. I mean, think about it. When was the last time that you dug through old emails looking for something important? My answer is “never.” So I did something radical.
I deleted all my email.
Yes. All of it.
And you know what? It felt good.
From now on I won’t be checking my email… I’ll be processing it. Twice a day I will sit down and deal with my email. As email comes in from a list that I don’t ever have time to read anyway, I will unsubscribe…no matter how great the list is! Emails that require a response will be dealt with… and then deleted. After all, there is no sentimental value in most emails. For emails that I do want to save, they will be put in their own folder.
And that is my plan of attack for keeping my inbox empty.
Ahhh… A nice, clean inbox. Now that makes me smile!
How about you? Are you brave enough to take the plunge?
I have 8000 I haven’t read. But I’m not going to delete. If I did that I could miss out on payments, sponsored posts, follow ups to product reviews, etc. But every single day I do purge. I was at 10k unread emails. I get about 200/day. I still have less today than I had a week ago, becauase I purge. So, while I do have a plan of attack, it doesn’t include deleting all. That scares the crap out of me LOL!
I love a clean inbox! I already took the plunge. I too am unsubscribing from a lot of great lists. Now that we’re “roadschoolers,” I don’t have time or access to delete or read, so I have to get rid of almost everything. :( It gives me more time with the kiddos, though, because even deleting takes time! Thanks for the post. I feel better having a partner in crime! :)