emails

Don't faint....but I have ONE email in my inbox at the moment! I LOVE email. Love it, love it, love it....did I mention that I LOVE it?! At times in my life I have received over two hundred emails a day from various lists, friends and such.

I have found that there is a time and a season for all things in my life. And when I had young babies nursing every two hours that was my season for high volume email. I could always tell my babies were weaning when my email started to go unread for days at a time. And as they weaned I would gradually unsubscribe from my email lists. But I still averaged 30 emails a day, until recently.

I read Tim Ferris's Four Hour Work Week, (http://fourhourworkweek.com/) and his thoughts on email really impacted me. I, just like every one else, received several ad/offer type emails a day and I was subbed to 10 or more yahoo lists. All the lists were very low volume, maybe one or two emails a day, but they all add up! His point was that every time you have to take a second and focus on those emails, even just deleting them, you're sidetracking yourself from the really important in your life. A second or two per 30 emails, deleting them, adds up, and I could see how I had to use energy/focus to make the decision to delete with or without reading every single time, with every single email.

I took the plunge and unsubbed from all but three yahoo lists, two of which I am no mail on. I go read them if I want. They are home school lists and I don't need to see every email about what is going on. I can go to the website, skim the list and click on the ones that are relevant. I also have to add that I am not "allowed" to unsub from them either. I have some really wonderful friends on them and they won't let me just quietly unsub. Which gives me warm fuzzies, because they care! I can live with that.

The third one is supporting recording my life lessons, they can be seen over at http://onespiritualwoman.blogspot.com/. This list varies in it's volume, but it rarely has email every single day.

I went in to every add/offer email I received and unsubbed, as they came through my email box. Which admittedly added a LOT of time for a few days. But it only took a day or two to see a really huge difference in the time/energy spent on email and it felt really good. So I had the motivation to keep unsubbing. It is really hard for me to put into words the amazing feeling that this has given me. I don't miss those offers at all.

I do have to add that I don't tend to use coupons (it's just not what I do right now, for various reasons), and so I don't miss those offers. If you do use them, then setting up a folder for them to go directly to, and then only going to that folder when you're shopping and need to use one, would be a huge energy/time saver.

Now I have way fewer emails to deal with and I have a cleaner inbox, which makes it less overwhelming to deal with the emails that do come through. And at times I actually get down to one or two emails. I can't remember ever having an empty box....but I think one or two is pretty good. I love how energizing it is to come to my inbox and be able to whip through what's in it and move on. It just feels so good.

Give it a try, you can always go back and resub if you don't like the results. If you give it a try let me know how it goes!