I learned several years ago to keep my email box at zero. One of the best feeling I get is when I open my inbox—whether it is my work email or my personal one and have nothing in there. One of the biggest challenges to this end, in my personal account, is keeping the inbox thinned out so I can read what is important.
I am currently on a binge to thin out my personal inbox. Typically, I open my email to find it full of notifications. What I tend to do is scan, check “all”, followed by “delete checked”. Realistically, I only un-check one or two boxes before I delete the majority. I look at emails all day long—why would I want to read anything else when I get home? So, most of it gets deleted.
The logical thought is, if I’m deleting it every day—why I am I still getting it. Most of what I have been getting is the marketing tool of newsletters. When I entered my email address for any reason, they follow-up with a newsletter subscription. And that’s ok—that’s their job. However, reading said newsletters is not mine. So, the best way to thin out my personal email inbox is to unsubscribe from these newsletters.
Unsubscribing for newsletters is a fairly simple, yet time consuming process—but only for a short time. There are programs say that they will do this for me, but I’ve tried them without too much satisfaction. There is something about going through and deciding what I want to keep and what I want to unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe, the first day, I zeroed out my inbox. Then each email that came in throughout the day, I unsubscribed or I kept. It’s that simple. Rather than waiting for them to pile up, I just knock it out as they come in. If I’m in doubt, I just delete the email and make the decision the next time I see another newsletter from this sender. This is a simple way to thin out the personal email inbox and will free up time with each newsletter you unsubscribe to.
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