Wednesday, September 9, 2015
Inbox Ninja
I have to admit something to you dear readers. When I see someone's inbox that's holding all their email and has an unread count of any number over 10, my soul dies a little. Pretty much every email program has free folders or labels. There is really no good reason not to use them. "Well gmail has a search function." This is true. But it doesn't always work. I don't know if anyone else has trouble, but there has been many times I've attempted to search for an email and it came up dry, and when I finally found the email I was looking for, everything I searched was spelled and formatted correctly. WTF gmail?! Anyway....
I want to show you something. My Gmail inbox. Here's what it looks like:
The "Social" and "Promotions" tabs look the same. A few things to notice: first off, the obvious one, it's empty. Second, although I have around 35 labels, there are 3 visible on the side. (Outside of the standard ones)
A quick tip, you may notice my top label is "....temp". (I put the dots there so it comes in first on my list) I use this for emails I don't need to keep permanently, but many need to reference again. Order confirmations for example. I hold onto it until I get my order, then delete it. I'll save the receipt obviously. My temp folders helps keep all my other labels a little cleaner.
I felt like sharing this today after reading This Blog Post from the "A Life Less Frantic" blog. It lists out how EASY it is to go from a mess of an inbox to an empty one.
Every couple months or so, I go through some of the labels and delete things. I have a label for my online hopping receipts, but I try to only keep a couple years worth and then delete anything older. Same with online bill payments, although I keep those for longer than a couple years.
As I always say "digital clutter is still clutter." And clutter = stress. You have to think of email like physical mail. Sort it immediately and you don't have to worry about it in the future.
I hope this was helpful. Or at least inspiring to see what an empty inbox looks like. :)
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