I used to be a digital hoarder.
Not anymore, though. Now, one of my beginning-of-the-year tasks is to give my email Inbox(es) an enema.
Inbox Zero is a myth. Or rather, it’s a myth past the second week of January. So I don’t fight it. In fact, I’ve come to find that I don’t even need it. But once a year, I give that Inbox a right and proper enema. And boy, does it feel good.
Fresh and clean. Uncluttered and unencumbered. Open and inviting.
The opportunities are endless.
My cleaning cycle consists of unsubscribing, archiving, and deletion. Truth be told, though, “delete” is by far my favorite. In a single morning, I deleted over 1000 emails that had left my Inbox looking like a digital version of the dystopian landscape from WALL-E.
I think there’s something emotionally cleansing about deleting that isn’t quite true of unsubscribing and archiving. Unsubscribing is an act for the future — “I don’t really know if you’ll try to take any of my future time, but please don’t.” Archiving is an act of preservation — “This might be useful, or helpful, or for some reason I may need to recall this. Even if I don’t want to.”
But deletion…That’s wiping the slate clean.
What’s been piling up in your emotional Inbox that you need to delete?
