Digital Decluttering: How deleting 9,415 emails felt like liberation
My personal email was always a source of horror, shame and a never-ending litany of useless emails. As someone who has always prided myself on trying to keep my work email orderly, this created unneeded stress.
I tried everything, yet the more organised my personal emails became, the more disorganised and stressful my email felt. The more productive I was with my personal email, the more time I seemed to spend on it.
This January, I decided to digitally declutter, starting with my personal email inbox.
What was the situation?
When I looked at my unopened emails in my inbox, I had close to two hundred. However, a deeper inspection put the number at thousands, as I have some annoying personal email habits.
- Signing up for newsletters that will be useful sometime in the future
- Creating a filter to tidy up the inflow of these emails
- Using my inbox as a ‘to-do’ list in addition to my to-do list
- Deleting, not unsubscribing or blocking
- Leaving emails read and unactioned
All of this was keeping my inbox a stressful mess. The numbers next to the folders would be ever-increasing, always increasing the stress.
So my email inbox became a weird, overwhelming mix of personal administration, information archive, task manager and occasional personal correspondence. It did not serve me.
So what action did I take?
Before everything else, I defined what I wanted email to be for: a place for important correspondence only.
Firstly, I deleted all my filters. These were hiding my emails, and they never got read.
Although this felt productive, it was creating stress and anxiety with all the emails in their folders unread and unloved. This meant more emails in my inbox for a week or two; however, it gave me an effective way to judge what I still wanted to receive.
Secondly, in each folder that contained important information — say, newsletters from specific creators — I deleted anything older than a month. I’ve not read about Dave’s wonderful new model railway, and I never will.
Thirdly, in each folder, I read a few emails and decided to unsubscribe as appropriate.
Fourth, I deleted the folder or label so the temptation to continue hoarding emails ended.
Fifth, I then began purging my inbox, which is the process I outline below.
Sixth, I used the subscriptions tab on Gmail to unsubscribe from as many newsletters and companies as possible. Other email providers will have something similar.
Once this was completed, over the next few days I culled, unsubscribed and blocked other emails as they entered my inbox, only rarely creating a filter for things I genuinely wanted to keep.
The result
9,415 emails deleted.
80 labels removed.
100+ filters purged.
My email has been transformed. I am no longer hoarding emails like a dragon hoards gold.
Most days my personal email now receives only 5–10 emails, and with some ruthless culling, I am keeping the “just in case” subscriptions out of my life.
What is happening now?
Since deleting all those emails, I feel free. Around 90% of emails entering my inbox are now being unsubscribed from. So many of those emails were nothing useful to me anymore.
It has been a week, and every day I spend 5–10 minutes deleting and unsubscribing from incoming emails. Very few need saving, keeping or a response.
The result is an inbox that is less busy and more useful.
My next task is to stay strong and not sign up for email newsletters. Before then, I want to provide you with a process to digitally declutter your email.
Join the Newsletter and stay up-to-date
How can you digitally declutter your email?
The guide below is aimed at personal email. Work email is another kettle of fish. This is about getting your personal inbox ship-shape and ready to hit the ground running. And yes, I love a good cliché.
Before you begin
As we walk down this road of digital decluttering, we need to know some important things:
- How many personal email addresses do you have?
- What do you use them for?
- Why do you have so many?
Step One: Culling email addresses
Personally, I believe you only need two personal email addresses:
- One main email address
- One backup email address
Step Two: Sorting the backup email address
On the backup email address:
- Delete all old, unwanted emails
- Unsubscribe from everything no longer useful
- Then leave it alone
This account exists to receive recovery emails from your main account and occasionally store backups of very important emails.
Step Three: Open two tabs
Open two tabs of your email client (Gmail, Hotmail, etc.).
As you process emails in one tab, use the other to deep-dive into your archive and delete previous emails from the same sender.
Example:
- You unsubscribe from a newsletter
- You search for that sender in the second tab
- You delete all previous emails
This removes future emails and clears past clutter.
Step Four: Tackling your main inbox
Choose a time without distractions, obligations or screaming children. Set aside an initial hour.
Now the main work begins.
Follow this process
1. Do I need to action this email?
- Yes → put it in the Action folder
- No → go to 2
2. Is this email a newsletter?
- Yes, and I want it → create a Newsletters folder and a filter
- Yes, and I don’t want it → unsubscribe, delete past emails, move on
- No → go to 3
3. Is this a receipt or vital record (e.g. payslip)?
- Yes → create a Receipts folder and filter
- No → go to 4
4. Is this marketing, and do I want to keep receiving it?
- Yes → create a marketing filter
- No → unsubscribe, delete past emails, move on
5. Any other type of email
- Yes → archive or create a filter
- No → unsubscribe, delete past emails, move on
Following this process reduces the current burden of emails.
You should be left with only these folders:
- Action
- Receipts
- Newsletters
- Archive
Step Five: Delete folders and their content
Folders are a great way of storing emails you will never read.
Open each folder and ask:
Is this useful content I might want to keep?
If not, delete everything. You can apply the Step Four process to each folder’s contents.
Step Six: Delete all filters
Filters create the illusion of organisation. Delete them.
This will mean more emails hit your inbox temporarily — and that’s good. Only keep filters created in Step Four.
Step Seven: Monitor your inbox
Over the next couple of weeks, emails will arrive in your clean inbox. This may be annoying.
Use this as the final clear-out. Apply the Step Four process to every new email.
Towards inbox (nearly) zero
Digital clutter, like household clutter, makes life more complicated.
Tackling it will help you feel less overwhelmed and ultimately give you more time.
Decluttering has been a breath of fresh air for me. I hope it helps you too.