Email Evolution

I'm going to say it - I have complete control over my email. No, seriously. It took a lot of hard work and habit changing, but I can honestly say email overload is the ONE information overload symptom I do not have. How on Earth is this possible?

Well, it wasn't always that way. Like everyone else, I got sucked into the "sign up for this newsletter", "add your address to this mailing list" craziness over the years. I was *DROWNING* in email for a very long time. I was getting upwards of 500 emails a day. That includes work-related, personal, mailing lists, newsletters, email related to volunteer projects, etc. Any message that came into my Inbox. Sometimes I didn't read them for days.

I had that tic I see in so many others now, wherein I felt the need to check my email 20 times an hour. Now? Twice a day, max. Maybe more if I'm working on a particular project. But any message that comes in is read, handled, and deleted, or in rare circumstances, filed away.

I used to have a file folder tree of 60 folders. Now, I have three.

What spurred this on was reading the "Inbox Zero" posts on 43folders.com. That started the wheels turning last fall. I spent time over the winter clearing out Archive folders and really LOOKING at the types of email I received.

Then, I discovered RSS. Major breakthrough. I started subscribing to the feeds for site I got email updates from, such as IdealBite and DailyCandy. Now, if I have a busy day and can't read those immediately, I can spend a leisurely evening with my laptop and Google Reader and catch up. What a concept!

As I started to whittle down the email inflow, I had another turning point. I went on vacation. After being gone for 10 days this past March, I came back to something like 1600 messages. Something had to be done.

So I took some time, 8 evenings to be exact, and went through my emails. Not just scan, move to a folder, ignore. But really looked. And then I started unsubbing. Talk about liberating. In my obsessive-compulsiveness, I did keep a list of newsletters and emails I thought I might miss, so that if I actually did, I could find the name of the site or company, and go resubscribe.

Now, nearly 5 months later, I miss almost none. I read almost everything with content via RSS. All the "Shop Now - Big Sale" ad/messages I used to get? Whatever. I know what online retailers I like to shop. There is almost always some sort of sale going on. If there isn't, I just check back. I don't need the email announcement.

I kept some things - recipe lists, animal welfare groups I work with, etc. But what a major difference. This week was especially busy for me work-wise. So I largely ignored any email not directly related to the project I'm on. Tonight, with some time to spare, I cleaned up my email. But it was easy, because I only had 200. That's a week's worth.

I know there are people out there who can't fathom so few emails anymore. Almost as if their level of success or popularity is directly in proportion to the number of emails they receive. I remember suggesting to a project team once that they NOT check email first thing in the morning, and instead, knock out the 1st task on the plan, just as an experiment to see how much more efficient we could become . Every single person looked at me as if I were insane. I would have gotten a better reception if I'd suggested ritual sacrifice first things every Monday.

Oh well..I'll continue to enjoy my freedom while they pass the time in "email jail"!