Clean Up The Email Clutter

For the last couple years, I had been scared of checking my email.  It's because I always felt so stressed out by the never ending list of emails in my inbox and the "number" of emails that it showed me.  I don't know what started my email phobia, but I guess it started after I missed some of the tasks that somebody emailed me to do...I missed them because those emails were pushed down and buried by huge number of emails that came in on a daily basis.  But avoiding checking the emails or looking at them just made me feel worse.  So I decided that the best way to conquer my phobia is to face the root cause of my fear, which is the clutter and the sheer volume of emails in my inbox.

In the last few days, I focused on cleaning up my tens of thousands of emails that I had accumulated forever. I receive so many emails everyday it's becoming overwhelming.  I had always saved my emails feeling that I would need to refer to them someday.  But over the years and tens of thousands of emails later, I realized I had never once re-opened the emails that I saved.  A lot of these saved emails were actually junk mails from stores that no longer even exist, like Wetseal, and even Blockbuster!

It's so liberating to have an empty mailbox. I just wanted to delete all the emails and started over and I did. From now on, I pledge to handle my emails in a more organized and uncluttered manner, so that I can make email a productive communication tool for me, instead of an extra burden in my life. Yes, I use Gmail because it's free and it's web based.