This guest post is part of our ongoing Micro Business Experts series, and is written by Cathlyn Driscoll, co-founder of Best Business Mastery in New Jersey.
It’s something people don’t like to talk about…the issues with hoarding. Just like the TV show by this name- some of us out there have a problem…mine is hoarding emails. Last week I had over 3,758 emails in my ‘in’ box. Why do I hoard emails? I’m afraid of losing something important. I’m afraid that I’ll delete something and of course need it the following week.
This has worked to both my advantage and disadvantage. I have had to go back a few years on occasion and tap into an email that was written to me eons ago. The disadvantage is that when I need to find an important email quickly- I have to do a search, and search, and search- and since I have over 3500 emails- it can take a while- even if I search by date, name or topic. LOTS of wasted time. Truth be told, emails after a year and a half are rarely accessed, and I’m tired of wasting time searching for things.
My solution (and I sincerely hope this will help other email hoarders) is to do view emails by the ‘From’ tab. Doing this, you can go through name by name and either: Delete emails 10 or 20 at a clip or you can create folders to ‘save’ important ones- but then they will be organized! Imagine finally deleting all those newsletters or spam emails quickly and efficiently!
The secret is not to overwhelm yourself. Don’t try and clean out your over loaded email in box all in one day- it’s just too exhausting. Set a goal. Mine is to clean out a minimum of 100 emails per day. This way, I inch closer to my goal each day of having a ‘clean’ ‘in-box’ and don’t get myself too immersed for that long.
Current email count: 1545-…I’m making progress!
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