I heard Brendan Burchard say the other day that on January 1st, he archives all of his email and starts from Inbox Zero.
Inbox Zero is a noble aspiration as far as I’m concerned. I do know people who delete everything on a regular basis, but my Inbox looks like their worst nightmare - thousands of unopened emails, and a big clutter of opened ones. Of course Google makes it too easy to keep everything, with practically unlimited storage (although I recently had to buy some more, not for email but for documents). I used to filter everything into folders, now with the ease of search I don’t even bother to do that, so it’s a big amorphous mess. No wonder I miss things sometimes, although I do search regularly for unread mail.
So I’m debating going with Brendan’s method and archiving everything (or almost everything - maybe I’ll keep stuff from ongoing classes and orders that haven’t arrived yet) on January 1st. It’s less drastic than actually deleting it, as the archive would still be accessible if I really needed something. What would it be like to have an empty Inbox?
I’m curious to know what you do with your Inbox - are you a hardcore Inbox Zero fan, or do you let it pile up like I do? Or are you somewhere in between?
If you decide to do a Brendan (as I probably will), let me know how that goes for you - do you miss anything you archived? Does it make you feel anxious or liberated? I’d love to know!
Wishing you and yours a healthy, happy, safe and successful 2024!
I regularly clean out my inbox and junk files on a weekly basis. I feel so much better and lighter when I do this.