Keep your email ONLY for important things.
In concept. In your head. Once you’ve done that, you’ll notice the quality of your mailbox changing. And you’ll start finding it useful again in renewed ways.
Your mailbox is one of THE most crucial tools in your online life. Whether one realises it or not. I don’t think social media has replaced an email address nor can it do so in the future. There are reasons the bulk of financial communications (for example banking statements) continue to rely on email as the formal channel to reach their customers or clients.
I find that when I need to be creative, I seek a clutter-free workspace.
Whether it’s my work desk if I’m writing or a kitchen surface if I’m cooking.
For a lot of us, there is something about the process of decluttering and getting organized which symbolizes a removal of roadblocks and obstacles to creative thinking.
An extension of this preference is the desire to be digitally organised.
Trash can of spam
It’s only too easy for our personal mailbox to degenerate into a big trash can of spam.
Marketing communications, notifications from every tiny thing we ever associated with, promotions & offers that nobody asked for. Sometimes it feels like our mailbox is under attack. This can vary depending on which country you live in. In the countries without the GDPR (a law to protect privacy) the volume of junk mail per day is much higher than in developed countries.
2 years ago when I cleaned up my mailbox
I don’t quite remember what triggered it. Maybe I was tired of seeing 7000+ unread mails in my Gmail. I had moved houses, shifted cities/countries and continued to get bombarded with mail from every place I had lived in. My digital identity had so many parts that my poor mailbox was crumbling under it all.
I spent two days to reorganize my mailbox and it has been THE BEST productivity thing I did in a long time! Suddenly I began reading much better content. I subscribed to newsletters in topics of my interest. I followed specific writers/institutions whose work I was keen to read. I began learning more in the fields of my interest. I renewed conversations with friends across geographies. My penpal(e-version!) relationships improved. All of this without any social-media algorithms. Good old one-to-one communication. With the directness and structure that email-writing brings.
Here are a few things based on what I did to bring down my unread mail from 7000 to less than 7!
1. Unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe
Keep your email ONLY for important stuff. This rule will help you identify which company, service or salesperson you don’t want to hear from. Each time you see a promotional email from a new vendor/service, hit unsubscribe. You could report them as spam if you never signed up for it in the first place. This could take you an hour or a few hours, depending on how much of unimportant or useless mails you’re attracting. Over time, the volume of unwanted mail hitting your inbox will go down.
2. Use advanced mail-search filters
Use filters to identify the volume of mail you have attracted from the same sender. In Gmail this is straightforward to do. Let’s say you have a large number of mail all from Quora Digest. Use a search query “from: Quora Digest” (or you can be more specific by putting in the email address). Quickly glance through and confirm what you’re seeing is what you wanted to see. Select all the results and bulk delete it.
By default Gmail might load 50 conversations in results. You can change this to delete all conversations that match your search.
There is of course a need for caution during any bulk delete operation. You need to be vigilant and make sure you know what you’re doing!
Turn off email notifications for all social media
Turning off notifications is a frequent recommendation I’ve made in all my trainings in Vidarbha. It’s bad enough that so many things are competing for our attention. It’s wiser to be in fetch-mode. Where we’re accessing something intentionally, rather than to have things interrupting us.
Not just social media apps, but turn off notifications for every web service except the most important, few things that you’ve identified.
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Until next week
I loved the benefits of a much more organized mailbox.
I’d love to know how you use your mailbox. How much, how frequently and for what purposes. Maybe it’s become quite useless to you? Or whether it’s filled with spam (like mine was) or if you’re already ahead and organized! 🙂
Until next week!