My intention today was to have a really good clean in the house but by the time we had seen the man who came to measure up for our new sliding wardrobes in what will be the guest room, when we have decorated it, the urge to get scrubbing had waned and I became sidetracked by checking my emails.
Then somehow I have managed to spend most of the afternoon clearing out old emails from my inbox all 755 and doing a bit of reorganising of folders. I now have zero emails in my inbox (but that won’t last long) and anything that needs some further consideration is in a follow-up folder at the top of the folder list. I have fifteen follow-up items to deal with, some of which require an email answer. Anything I need to keep goes into an appropriate folder.
I have also unsubscribed from a number of those emails that arrive in my inbox and I find that I never open them – just delete them – but often they begin to stack up if I don’t log in to read my emails everyday and especially when we are at the cottage and do not have an internet connection.
I actually feel much better in myself for doing this task – it was prompted by something I read yesterday in the book How to Get Things Done by Richard Templar
Basically he suggests that you don’t work a week behind and gave emails as a prime example. You can deal with today’s emails or last Wednesday’s emails it takes the same amount of time but one keeps you on top of the game and is more efficient.
This made absolute sense to me as I find I am often reading last weeks emails and sometimes last months. In the big clear out I unexpectedly found an email received in August and still unread from my insurance company which had got lost amongst the many subscription emails that come in daily.
So now with less junk I should be able to spot the requests for the meter readings or the insurance renewal more easily.
Yes, I definitely feel good tonight after that major declutter- all I need to do now is make sure I leave 10 to 15 minutes a day to check on my inbox and read and deal with the new items.
I am looking at other areas of my life where I might be working a week behind – do you have this problem?
Have a good weekend. x
where the journey takes me 
That one week behind thing is a really good point. I do remember the standard advice that if you can reply to an incoming email in 2 minutes, then do it, rather than thinking you’ll get back to it later. I keep so many emails for documentation of actions. I really need them to be searchable. I should clean out my inbox better so the important stuff doesn’t get buried.
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I often don’t log into my emails everyday as I have had enough of answering emails at work. I am hoping that unsubscribing to a few of them will help – today I could see I went from zero to 25 by teatime twenty of which I deleted!
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I unsubscribed to a tonne of sites, many I never actually subscribed to in the first place, just before I left for our travels. I didn’t want to pay for data for junk. It has lightened my load. Most people I know don’t communicate by email anyway. Only one sister-in-law who hasn’t mastered FB and messenger.
I think it will take me over a week when I am back at work next week to deal with my work emails! I will jut work backwards.
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I have just come into night and opened up my emails to find over 40 just today! One of them was Boots our national chain for beauty goods and pharmacy supplies and they have sent an email to ask if I prefer a bath or shower – actually I prefer not to get the email!!
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