Spring Clean

Written for Funeralcare magazine, December 2017

I wish I was more like my Mum. There are three messages in her email inbox. Not because she has no friends – quite the opposite - but because she believes in tidying up as she goes. Dad clutches at the front of his shirt when she passes by in case she has it off his back on the way to the laundry.

I’m more a frenzied-burst-of-activity kind of a gal. I get so involved in what I’m doing that the laundry piles up next to me unnoticed. My darling says it’s because I can’t multi-task. I prefer to say I’m focussed. I have 112 emails in my inbox. Which sounds okay, when I consider the seven employment streams I’m currently juggling. But I also have a slovenly 1,276 emails spread across 35 folders and four email accounts. Which means I can’t see the wood for the trees.

My email as a productivity tool has become distinctly unproductive. When I “don’t have time” to delete as I go, I’m compromising my personal efficiency and the speed and efficiency of my computer system. Time for some pre-new-year resolutions.

I’m sceptical of reaching “Inbox Zero”, but I’m prepared to give it a go. It’s clear that I’ve outgrown my current filing system, but it might just need tweaking rather than nuking. My first step is to sort it.

This is the most time-consuming bit, but it will help me, and you if you’re playing along, to get rid of unwanted clutter. Your inbox is likely sorted by date so you see the most recent messages first. Let’s start by changing the sort criteria to “Sender” or “From”. This will allow us to easily identify old messages that should be deleted.

Conversations or messages that have outlived their usefulness. Delete. Long conversations or message “threads”. Delete all but the most recent. Messages that don’t look right - from the bank you don’t bank with, the purchase you didn’t make, the long-lost relative who died and made you an instant billionaire. Delete. Mailing list messages with special offers that don’t interest you. Delete. Special offers that expired anywhere from yesterday to last year. Delete. Mailing list messages that no longer interest you, or never did: Unsubscribe.

Did you come across anything with a due date in the future? Flag it. Better still, add a due date and reminder.

Hopefully by now you’ve got rid of some chaff, and along the way picked up some themes - projects, areas of interest, even bulk messages from particular people. Make a note of them. There are a couple of ways to keep these messages together so you can find them quickly. The first is to assign them a category. This can be helpful if all your inbox messages fit on one or two pages.

A more robust way is to create folders. You can create as many as you like, but to navigate them easily, remember less is more. To the left of your messages you already have several: Inbox, Drafts, Sent Items, Deleted Items. You can create your own by right-clicking “Inbox” (or any other folder), choosing “New Folder” and renaming it. You can then drag related messages into it, or you can automate the filing by creating a “rule” to move messages to a specific folder.

Don’t forget to clear out your “Sent Items” as well. They fly below the radar and quickly mount up. And set your “Deleted Items” to empty out when you close your email app, or it’s all for nothing!

Time to change the sort back to date order, and see how many new messages have sneaked in. In an hour – well, two actually, because I got side-tracked by the sale at Veronika Maine – I have 8 new messages. Manageable. I now have 28 messages in my inbox and 894 messages in seven folders. Not bad for a start. I’m off to do the laundry now.