Certain times of year, picking up email can get tiresome.
I notice that the busiest time for my inbox usually begins before American Thanksgiving, and continues all the way till the end of the calendar year.
Before the ‘holidays’ as the US refers to them, things are relatively calm. (In Canada our ‘holidays’ usually refer to Christmas – from say the 22nd till the day after New Year’s Day).
This year I have more email to manage than normal – since I purchased GAVA and CAVA, that it totally okay with me!
And I am also slowing down my client work and transitioning some clients to new VAs, so my inbox is slowing down for that kind of work.
So each morning I find my overly full inbox more of a distraction that a tool anymore.
That’s why it’s now time to take my own advice .. and unsubscribe to the people that I am not following.
If I’m not opening your emails, I really don’t need to be receiving them each week (or each day, as in some cases!)
Honestly, it was getting to the point where I would delete 100s of emails each morning, without reading them. That leaves me no time to actually read the ones that I do keep, even though I keep them.
So now instead of just deleting them, unread, I am actually unsubscribing from them.
Some of these lists I have been on for years. It felt like a bit of a betrayal to unsubscribe, but they are not serving me if I never open them up (and I am not serving them by being a good mailing list member!)
The first day I unsubscribed from about 50. I could hardly believe it. It took time – time that I don’t have two weeks before Christmas! So I decided to manage it better.
Each morning now I unsubscribe to whatever came in over the last day or so … just up to 12 lists. That helps me to manage my time, and it still gets the job done.
It’s like taking weight off – you can’t take it all away much faster than you put it on! So a bit at a time works.
Same with this. The pile of emails coming in every day is definitely going down. This morning I only got 7 that I had to unsubscribe from.
And I’ll keep it going – it’s a much more manageable task now.
And the ones that I am keeping I am reading! What a concept! 🙂
For the long-term people I had been subscribed to, here’s my logic: when I see something that you are doing that interests me, I can always jump back on your list. But for now it’s not a good fit.
How many lists do you subscribe to? Have a look at what’s coming in to your inbox every day. And check what you are doing with it.
If you are feeling stressed out every morning because of your email, maybe you need to do the same!