Clear my inbox

How I did it: It took me ages. I decided to do it, and sat there deleting emails for about an hour. I started with the ones that were oldest - I discovered that these were generally ones that I'd previously decided to hold on to for various reasons, mostly sentimental. Mistake #1! I sat there mostly just reading through the emails & reliving old memories, not getting much done.
My second attempt at knuckling down took me from 94 pages to 50 pages and I deleted about 1000 messages. This was easier, as I used the search function to work through and find stuff that was obviously junk mail. I didn't even look at any personal emails, so I didn't get sidetracked. All the same, it was SUPER BORING so I gave up after a couple of hours.
3rd attempt: I rearranged my folders so they were more appropriate. I got rid of ones dedicated to things like my old ebay and Livejournal accounts that I don't use any more, and made new ones for things based on how I would deal with them, for example 'Useful - Long Term' and 'Useful - Short Term' which is more of an ongoing system rather than a place to hide emails!
It's taken me 3 hours to get through it, but with some ruthless determination, I'VE DONE IT. And hell yes, it feels good!

Lessons & tips: Make folders but ensure they're relevant & not just hiding places for messages.

Don't start by going through your oldest emails - they are usually ones that have been there for a reason - my oldest 50 messages were all sentimental personal messages from people which I had spared on previous deleting sprees... I spent so much time re-reading them I made no progress! It's good to reminisce but bad for productivity.

Persevere. Be ruthless. Make sure junk is blocked so it doesn't stack up. Take breaks so you don't fall asleep or sing along to some music to keep your spirits up!

Resources: Just used standard hotmail but discovered Windows Live Mail program is quite handy for selecting and dragging messages to folders etc.

May 23, 12:06PM PDT | 0 comments