Now I'm not talking personal emails from co-workers, family, friends, prospects, team members, etc....emails of a legitimate topic, should be dealt with within 24 hours. After your response is sent, DELETE!
Now I'm talking about mailing lists you may be on, junk emails, and those FWD FWD FWD jokes and chain emails....
You have to admit it, you probably have a slew of emails in your email box(es) that you've either flagged, marked as unread or sorted into folders to read later because you don't have the time right now.
Let me tell you why this is a bad idea... Clutter, not only is untidy in your home, it also clutters the mind. As my friend Jacqui Gates said in a recent video "Clutter is procrastination manifest".
Saving all those messages for 'when you have time' is simply stashing procrastination for a time when you need an excuse to not do what you need to do!
For instance, have you ever had or heard this conversation...
- "What are you doing?"
- "Oh catching up on emails, I have hundreds in here I've not gotten to"
Yep, you know what I mean. They are going through their CRAP they saved for another day. All while leads are waiting to be called, laundry is waiting to be folded, holiday cards are waiting to be written....
Now in all seriousness, if those messages were important enough you'd read them as they came in. The fact that you can flag them, mark them unread or stash them in a folder simply means they do not score high enough on your NOW chart.
In all honesty, how do you FEEL when you open your email box(es) and see all those bold messages that are looming there waiting for you to read them? What about the flags that have gone red showing they are overdue? How about the folders you have labeled 'important', 'read later' and so on? The numbers next them grow day by day and odds are you are feeling a bit overwhelmed.
Now I'll admit, I am writing this note because I just went through this myself. I literally just deleted over 1,000 messages that I had 'set aside' for future reading. I always felt behind, like there was something I needed to complete and realized that those bold emails that greeted me every morning when I logged on for a day at the home job, all those that were sorted and flagged, were nagging me. They were incomplete tasks cluttering my inbox and my mind, not allowing me to have a clear mind to move forward and complete the day.
I feel SO much better now that they are gone! I've made a commitment to myself, if I get a non-personal message, I will decide that moment either to read it, or delete it. If the subject line does not capture me, then it is not meant to be!
There is no obligation to read every blog post that you follow, there is no requirement to follow every breath of the biggest name in the industry, there is no reson to feel you have to absorb every word of every email sent to you.
I challenge you to go to your email and DELETE, DELETE, DELETE! As Jacqui Gates said in her video I noted above "it's amazing what you can accomplish in just 15 minutes". 1-2-3 GO!
Alethea Anderson
Achieving by Deleting
