One Goal for 2019: Maintain Inbox Zero

When was the last time your inbox had zero unread emails? Zero things that needed your attention. For me, it has been years.

I used to be pretty good at keeping my inbox at work organized and cleaned out. That is until event week. It didn’t matter what event it was. All the customer service emails, vendor questions, order confirmations, and one million more messages, it got out of hand quickly. A few times a year I would take an hour or two on a weekend and sort through all the emails in my inbox, leaving only the ones that still needed my attention in the main inbox.

My personal emails, on the other hand, were a total mess. I have one email address I have had for almost ten years that all my “junk” email goes to. You know the one you send all your coupons and subscription emails too? That one had over 20,000 unread emails in it at all times. I just didn’t care. If I was at a store I would just search for an email from the store I was at to see if I had a coupon. I didn’t think seeing the little red bubble with a number larger than 20,000 in it bothered me. Until I no longer had it there.

I was doing a ten day declutter challenge and one of the days was to tackle your cell phone. Delete unused apps, rearrange your apps, delete your emails, ect. It took me 3 hours to mass delete every single email in that inbox. I felt refreshed once it was done though. Now, I check it twice a day and file the coupons or offers I may want into a folder, put emails I want to keep in a keep folder, and delete the rest. Apparently seeing the notification bubble was effecting me, because I love not having it there. I know at the end of the day I have taken care of everything and nothing needs my attention.

I am doing the same thing with my other personal email and my work email. Before I leave work at the end of the day all my emails are filed so only the ones I need to attend to in the morning remain in my inbox. Is this something you are good at doing? If you aren’t doing it I encourage you to try it this weekend. You will feel accomplished and refreshed.

Side note: the 99 notifications in my social media apps are from old Facebook pages that I used to manage from work. Those are gone now too 🙂