I completely deleted an entire email account last month. I’d had this account for almost 20 years and was so nervous that something horrible would happen and I would desperately need access to this email address after it was gone. I spent a full year monitoring the account and slowly moving actual important things to a different email address in preparation. Then one day I decided I’d prepared enough and just pulled the trigger. It was amazing. I got to watch 6,000 unread emails just disappear and now I have one less email account to monitor. Sooo many subscriptions finally dealt with. It was so satisfying that I’m already thinking about doing it with another email. For some reason I had 4 (now 3) different personal email addresses, not even counting work related emails.
I have decades of folders in folders of organized photos. As well as a massively chaotic, sorted by seasons, Downloads folder. Yes it’s an uncompleted task, but since focusing on reading and not image / video based entertainment it doesn’t bother me much anymore.
Emails took me months of both deleting and unsubscribing to dwindle it down to only things I want.
After finding many great sources to read from, I realized I can’t read them all. And instead of narrowing them down it’s just what gets read and unread isn’t that big a deal. These fun parts of life are there when you’re ready to chew on and are okay to miss when you aren’t. Let anxiety come from something more urgent, because I think I’d be a bit sad if they disappeared one day.
Thanks for the article Jose. Marie Kondo says that she started teaching organising and decluttering because no one teaches us this value to the degree that is necessary. I think the same applies for digital information. At least the parents who’ve suffered this mess, should not only learn themselves the art of digital organisation, but pass that on as an important value to their children. I have recently got my photos down from 12000 to under 2000, and ordered prints for photo album. I used to monitor emails of a very popular business, and that taught me an invaluable skill to manage my own email. My mantra is that email/digital files are not just to be just read, but they must be processed. I now have a dedicated folder for anything I’d like to put into my tax return, rest is archived, newsletters are routinely monitored and anything pending is flagged and followed up and archived once completed. Downloads folder is empty and documents folder is catalogued like a library. And I still feel I am only getting started.
I completely deleted an entire email account last month. I’d had this account for almost 20 years and was so nervous that something horrible would happen and I would desperately need access to this email address after it was gone. I spent a full year monitoring the account and slowly moving actual important things to a different email address in preparation. Then one day I decided I’d prepared enough and just pulled the trigger. It was amazing. I got to watch 6,000 unread emails just disappear and now I have one less email account to monitor. Sooo many subscriptions finally dealt with. It was so satisfying that I’m already thinking about doing it with another email. For some reason I had 4 (now 3) different personal email addresses, not even counting work related emails.
I have decades of folders in folders of organized photos. As well as a massively chaotic, sorted by seasons, Downloads folder. Yes it’s an uncompleted task, but since focusing on reading and not image / video based entertainment it doesn’t bother me much anymore.
Emails took me months of both deleting and unsubscribing to dwindle it down to only things I want.
After finding many great sources to read from, I realized I can’t read them all. And instead of narrowing them down it’s just what gets read and unread isn’t that big a deal. These fun parts of life are there when you’re ready to chew on and are okay to miss when you aren’t. Let anxiety come from something more urgent, because I think I’d be a bit sad if they disappeared one day.
Excited to read this. Gives me some Cal Newport vibes.
Thanks for the article Jose. Marie Kondo says that she started teaching organising and decluttering because no one teaches us this value to the degree that is necessary. I think the same applies for digital information. At least the parents who’ve suffered this mess, should not only learn themselves the art of digital organisation, but pass that on as an important value to their children. I have recently got my photos down from 12000 to under 2000, and ordered prints for photo album. I used to monitor emails of a very popular business, and that taught me an invaluable skill to manage my own email. My mantra is that email/digital files are not just to be just read, but they must be processed. I now have a dedicated folder for anything I’d like to put into my tax return, rest is archived, newsletters are routinely monitored and anything pending is flagged and followed up and archived once completed. Downloads folder is empty and documents folder is catalogued like a library. And I still feel I am only getting started.
Jose, danke Ihnen!!
Thanks for taking my suggestion, you brought up some points in this article I hadn’t thought of before. I also didn’t know about Digital Clean up day.