For the past few weeks on the blog, I’ve been writing a lot about goals. First, I shared my yearly goal-setting process. Last week, I wrote about how goal setting helps me make decisions.
This week, I want to tell you a little tale about how, when I recently decided to clean out and organize my email, I unknowingly aligned my inbox with my values and goals.
I have always prided myself on being a fairly organized person. Friends and family typically come to me when they need help getting any aspect of their life more organized. And I love helping!
So you can imagine how shocked I was when one day last year I realized that I was actively avoiding my email inbox because it was so disorganized. I’ll admit, I had let it get out of control, at least according to my standards.
I’ve had this email address for as long as I can remember. I have mostly used it for personal needs, but I also used it for business for about a year when I was freelance writing and editing. So, I wasn’t too surprised that it had gotten a bit out of control. The number of things I had signed up for over the years was astronomical, and I was getting so many ad-like emails I didn’t want.
I thought I was doing a better job than I was. I had always tried to keep my inbox organized – deleting emails I didn’t need and filing away more important emails. I always gasped in horror when I would see my friends’ Gmail icons on their phones or iPads that were alerting them to 6,495 new emails. Many of them said they just let it go, never filing things away or deleting emails. I know everyone has a system, but that one was definitely not for me.
When the idea of organizing my email inbox first came onto my radar
When I was in graduate school, we had a professional organizer come in and give a talk to the whole department. One thing she said really stuck with me. She told us to think of our email inboxes like our actual postal mailboxes. Would you bring all your postal mail inside, open it, and then put whatever mail you didn’t want or didn’t need back in the mailbox? Of course not – over time, that would be a disaster.
Ok, maybe not everyone feels this way (for example, my husband thought this idea was ridiculous; it didn’t resonate with him at all when I told him about it many years later). But this concept really stuck with me. It made so much sense. Leaving my email messages in my inbox was like letting my paper mail stack up on my dining room table.
The professional organizer went on to say that everything in your email inbox (and this also extends beyond email, for everything considered “clutter” or “stuff” in your life) should be filed and sorted and should have its own place, just like you would with your actual postal mail (junk mail goes into the recycling bin, important papers get filed away, etc.).
How I got my email inbox in shape
When I had the realization last year that I was avoiding my email inbox because of how disorganized and out of control it was, I decided that instead of continuing to avoid it, I wanted to do something about it.
I came up with a system that worked for me. I want to emphasize this because I realize that my strategy will understandably not work for everyone. I’ve actually had a few friends, who also wanted to get organized when it came to their email, ask me how I did it. Although they didn’t end up using the same strategy, talking about it and learning how I went about it got them thinking and helped them come up with their own strategy that worked for them.
In thinking about how I wanted to get organized, I realized that I already spent ~30 minutes each morning looking through my email. I would read any new emails that came in, respond to important ones, and read blogs I loved as I ate my breakfast and drank my coffee.
I realized I already had a leg up for getting started because the habit of looking at my email already existed.
James Clear, in his #1 New York Times bestseller Atomic Habits, writes about making any new habit you’re trying to start obvious, attractive, simple, and satisfying.
For me, I realized the most obvious and simple adjustment I could start with would be to spend half of the time that I was already spending actually sorting my email. I would get through 15 minutes of sorting/filing/archiving and then treat myself to reading blog posts for the last 15 minutes.
I filed important things away under existing labels (I use Gmail), and I made new labels for things that didn’t fit under existing ones. I archived any emails I didn’t need or want. I used a heavy hand here. It’s easy to get into the trap of thinking you’ll need something again one day (this goes for filing papers as well). I tried really hard to not think too much about it. If I knew I needed to keep an email, I kept it, but if there was really any doubt that I needed it, I tried to delete. For the most part, it worked.
But I didn’t want to just file emails away and archive ones I didn’t need. That was a huge part of the process, but my second goal was to decrease the number of emails actually coming in on any given day or week. The hardest and most grueling work, but I would also argue was the most important, was unsubscribing from mailing lists I no longer wanted to be on.
The first part of this step was hardest, where I had to decide what emails to keep getting and what emails to get rid of (helpful tip: nothing you do here is permanent, you can always resubscribe). Some emails were easy to unsubscribe from, like Wayfair ads and coupons, but others were harder. I tried to err on the side of a “delete away” approach because I knew I wanted to drastically decrease the number of emails I was getting on a daily basis, so I tried to only keep mailing lists that I really liked and cared about (and had actually read recently or really wanted to read but didn’t have time), with emails that I would definitely read if they came in.
Now sit back and let the magic happen!
In doing this strategy for ~15 minutes every weekday, it took me about a month to get my inbox to a place that I was happy with, and boy was it worth it!
It took a little while for all the unsubscribing to catch up, but I now get probably, on average, about 5 nonpersonal emails per day compared to the 20-30 I was getting before.
I can happily say, one year later, that I am thrilled with the outcome, and I’m so glad I took that one month to get my email inbox into shape. I no longer feel burdened by my email inbox, and I actually enjoy the ~30 minutes I now spend in the mornings checking my email and reading blogs.
And the best part by far has been the unexpected outcome of the process. It seems so obvious now, but it wasn’t something I was thinking about in the midst of organizing. The emails I’m getting now are actually ones I want to receive.
I went into this process simply wanting to decrease the overwhelm I felt by my email inbox. Now, on the other side, I realize that I have created an email inbox that is aligned with my goals and values! By intentionally choosing what I would and would not let into my email space, a natural outcome has been that my email inbox is now aligned with the things I most value in life.
By quieting all the other “noise” that was in my inbox and causing me to avoid it, I’m now seeing the emails that I actually want to see. Now, I get emails that are important to me that I may have missed before because I would just go through and delete the 30-40 daunting emails that had piled up.
For example, I learned that the meditation community I follow, the Open Heart Project, had started publishing books. They put out a call via email for anyone who wanted to read an advance copy of the new book they were putting out on Buddhism. The only catch was that we had to write a review! Um, yes please! This was something that was completely aligned with one of my yearly goals of learning more about Buddhism.
Another example is an opportunity I stumbled upon from Jonathan Field’s newsletter. He’s the creator of the Good Life Project Podcast and the author of SPARKED. You may remember the Sparketype Assessment I referenced when I wrote a post about how part-time work became my goal. Well, in one of his recent newsletters, he was asking for listener questions on a new podcast he was starting. I submitted a question, and I got picked! You can listen to the episode where they answer my question here (more on that in a future blog post).
Organizing my email inbox has also made my life better in that I stay “in the know” about local events going on. We love our small Vermont town, and we enjoy being part of a community and supporting local. With less junk coming into my inbox, I’m able to stay up-to-date on the goings-on in our community. It’s how we found out about a Grateful Dead cover band playing later this summer at a local vineyard. Note: this outcome isn’t always never perfect. You’ll still miss things, and you still have to find the right email lists to subscribe to; we recently missed a local opportunity to see George Clinton that Mr. Dink is still quite upset about.
Last but certainly not least, organizing my inbox has enhanced my financial life. By aligning my inbox with my goals and values, when it comes to money, I am only seeing emails come in for causes I truly care about. This has enhanced my ability to give generously. I’ve found that I now have more opportunities to give to causes that matter to me (and this is another way we support local). On the flip slide, a big part of the equation is that I’m not tempted to spend on things that don’t matter to me, which I accomplished by getting rid of emails like those from Wayfair and Shutterfly.
Parting words
Putting in the work to organize my email inbox has benefited my life on a daily basis. It has made checking my email something I truly enjoy rather than dread.
And, it’s a lot more easy to keep up with the organization once the heavy-lifting work in the beginning is done. Now, I can much more easily spot an email I don’t want and immediately unsubscribe. On the flip side, when I decide to sign up for a new email list, I pause and really think about whether receiving those emails would align with my goals and values and whether it will enhance my life (but bonus, even if it doesn’t, I can always unsubscribe!).
How is your relationship with your email inbox? If it’s out of control, have I tempted you to give organizing a try? How would you do it differently than I did? I’d love to hear from you!