two | practicing simplicity

winter blooms at my local florist

Living a less-distracted life : de-cluttering my inbox.

I'm so passionate about de-cluttering my physical space but when it comes to the virtual I'm just plain slack. I'm embarrassed to admit that last week my inbox was bulging with 20,000+ emails. There's a few reasons why:

• I never deleted unwanted emails
• I read emails on my phone and promptly forgot to reply, hence they just sat there
• I didn't have an allocated "email" time and therefore dealing with the 50+ emails a day was never a priority

I'm treating my inbox like a cupboard that's too jammed-packed with "stuff" that I can't even close it. I'm deleting and sorting and making good intentions to stay on top of it all by doing the following: 

• I'm allocating two times a day to check emails, ultimately limiting the distraction of an email here, an email there
• I read the email, reply and then file/delete
• if I don't have time to reply, I mark the email as "unread"
• I've unsubscribed from all companies who send too many emails (once a month is acceptable, three a week is not)

So: de-clutter your virtual letterbox, it's somewhat satisfying.