And now, tackling the email
Between my website and the email automatically forwarded to me from Guys Lit Wire, I have been averaging about 150 emails a day for a very long time and it is completely insane. I scan through my inbox every morning and delete with abandon, my junk mail is even worse. (I wish I could ignore the junk mail but a couple of times a week real mail ends up in there so I have to check it at least every few days.)
Email is a stupid thing to worry about but when it's there everyday it becomes a burden and when I can't tell what is good and what isn't, my day just ends up starting with an annoyance. So, I decided a couple of weeks ago to start trying to get off some of the zillion mailing lists that I somehow got put on without my knowledge.
My daily goal was really tiny: just open 5 emails and unsubscribe. I figured out pretty quickly that a lot of emails are from the same lists, and also that unsubscribing is not that tough. I was able to get through my five often in just a couple of minutes. Some days that was all I did and I still felt like I accomplished something which was huge.
At least I wasn't just passively accepting all this crap everyday.
Some of the lists respond that it takes 5-7 days to be removed, others say it takes as long as 10 days. Because of that I don't think I'll get a really good idea of how successful I've been until the end of the month. By then, hopefully, I will be left with only the real junk (the Nigerian prince emails, etc.) and then I plan to blacklist those and see if I can outright block them.
I am really puzzled how I ended up on all these list. Several of them involve wine, which I don't drink and haven't ordered. Bloomberg News and the Economist like me a lot - several lists from each of them and again, no idea why. I also get a lot of stuff from people selling window blinds and hair replacement treatments.
WTF?
Today, I am down to 45 emails a day total. Since I doubt I spent 45 minutes of my time getting down to this, I think I've been pretty successful. I'm not done yet, but at least I don't feel angry every time I check my email which is huge.
Ending 2014 this way is actually a pretty good thing to do. Between the e-hoarding and the email, I feel like I'm cleaning up my computer life quite a bit. This week I start on the bookmarks with the same tactic - looking at 5 a day minimum and either deleting or organizing them into folders. I have no idea what I'm going to find but at least this is all stuff I definitely wanted at some point which is a huge improvement over the email.
It's the little things, right? *grin*
