"As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler..."
Henry David Thoreau
Can't really do much about the email I receive (apart from keeping my emails off sites so those evil spambots don't get hold of it) but I can control the stuff I save.
My sent items was overflowing with very old correspondence and was brimming at about the four and half thousand mark.
On trains, planes and during some down time that number has been whittled down by over three quarters (it's an ongoing process still).
I've also started using a much better 'filing' system through the use of dated folders and more importantly a kick-ass CRM tool called Highrise (which basically orders and assigns all my email to the individuals and contacts involved in the communication, hosting it all in the cloud and off my machine).
How do you ensure there is clutter in your inbox/email system?
Posts
DK,
ReplyDeleteThis will sound odd, but I delete essentially everything (I started this practice recently). I had lunch with Colin Wright (from Exile Lifestyle) over the summer, and he told me about how he reformats his MacBook every time he moves to a new country (every four months) and he basically starts from scratch (he gets rid of all the software and everything else on his Mac and adds stuff as he needs it).
This inspired me to just start deleting my emails. Sure there are times when I wish I had something saved (I save a handful with important info in a folder), but I've learned to not regret it, regret is a wasted emotion. I just except that I delete everything and move on.
Take care,
Joshua Millburn
Joshua - wow, cool, love it! Using Highrise enables me to effectively do this and still have a back up of conversations (which is definitely needed with clients and for practicalities like flight details, contracts, conference topics etc)... thanks for continually extending my thoughts and challenging my behaviour :-)
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally, I just cleared out a few thousand emails from my inbox just before stumbling across this posts! A few thousand down, 25k to go!
ReplyDeleteWith virtually unlimited space from gmail, it's very easy to let everything build up.
Paul - 25k to go, wow! Keep hitting that delete button ;-)
ReplyDelete