Update on Email Overload

Posted by Organizingguru

at 3:26 PM

Well, it has been a few weeks now and I have diligently been working on clearing out my email inbox of 13,000 emails. See the earlier post to catch up. I am happy to say after working on it a few hours a day I am now at zero emails in my inbox. Yay! I found the bulk search and delete feature I was looking for in my email program and this made it much easier to plow through. I also have now set up several email rules to divert known mail messages into specific folders so that my inbox will not be cluttered like it was again. That way I can go to the individual folders and half of the decision is already made.

I have also unsubscribed to dozens of lists that I was on that I was not reading and was probably never going to read. This may be hard for some, but this is the time to get real with yourself and save your sanity.

What I am learning through this process:

Your inbox is not a to do list. This is a hard one because it is so easy to leave things in your inbox that you need to do instead of dealing with it right away.
Your inbox should not be a catchall for delayed decisions.
Just like anything else your inbox needs daily attention and cleaning.
Just because I purchased from you in the past doesn't mean I want to hear from you every two days!
The biggest offender clogging up my inbox was all of those Facebook alerts. That was an easy fix I just go in and cut them off since I am on Facebook during the day anyway.

It has taken some time but now that I have plowed through this email inbox I am much more prepared to get a handle on all of my other email inboxes I have to keep up with. Granted they are not as bad as this one was, but better late than never to get them under control before they get out of hand like this inbox. I am also looking into updating my emails to go to one place so I can further organize and keep up with my emails. I hope this helps someone out there who has just as much stuff as me in their inbox to not feel alone and know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Until next time.