Simplify: Email

My first step of my simplifying and stretching my brain was to deal with my email. I had 77 unread emails in my personal account, 15 in a public account and 300+ in my Facebook/author/other public account.

Part of the problem is I am a sucker for those “sign up for our email list and we’ll send our ‘free’ 1,000 part course on how to blog and make twenty figures every decade.”  And then I leave them in my inbox, unread, marked unread in hopes that the unread status will guilt me into reading them and then the marketing starts and I wonder why I signed up for this list in the first place.

The second part of my massive e-mail collection was Facebook notifications. I belonged to a few groups that were set as notify me every time someone posts. Wana1011, I love everyone, but I the emails were burying me. Combined with all the emails I had skipped over, made for a very stressful email life. I would sometimes go weeks without checking email because it was too stressful.

I logged into my account, unsubscribed from all those email lists I didn’t read, and then I deleted all accompanying emails. The search function is your friend here.

Then I deleted all emails that were more older than 2011, except some files I had sent myself in 2006. really, really. Most of these were Freecycle(TM) related as I founded the group where we lived in 2005 and ran it until we moved last August. Good riddance.

I went into Facebook and went to each group and turned off notifications. On your home page, your groups are in the left frame, click on the group and then there is a little bar underneath the member pictures, one of the options is notifications. You can turn off or on notifications for this group.

I also went to that little arrow menu beside your profile and home link.

So it’s down arrow > Account settings > on the left Notifications and then you can choose what you want to be notified of and how.

That is all I’ve done so far. I kept Flylady notifications, even though I don’t read most of them but it keeps me on track. I don’t feel as bogged down when I check my email now. I feel happy, and I love deleting nonsense messages and making my inbox say 0 messages.

What do you do to simplify your email life? Or do you need to take some of the above steps to simplify?

Also check out the http://four.sentenc.es/ email project (also two, three and five are linked).

Tagged: Asrai Devin, burnout, Electronic mailing list, Email, Email address, Facebook, Flylady, simple life, simplify, slow down