What is weighing you down?
February 10, 2009 by J.C. Hewitt
Do you really want to delete all 92,452 emails in your archive?
I stared at the question for a solid minute. This was serious business. If I hit the button, I would be erasing my past. It would all be gone. I hadn’t carefully sorted through the messages looking for value. There could be important stuff in there: Letters from friends, questions from readers, passwords and PINs, half-written articles that I could still finish someday. Was I really crazy enough to hit the button?
The mind is a curious device. Somewhere in the back of it there’s a place that keeps track of all the things you should be doing but aren’t. It doesn’t matter whether they are good things or bad things, they just keep echoing in the back of your mind. You should be cleaning the kitchen. You should be losing those extra pounds. You should be finishing that blog post. You should be figuring out why the check engine light has been on for 30,000 miles. You should be watching that Freaks and Geeks DVD that Netflix sent you last November.
There are four things you can do about your unfinished tasks. You can do them, you can delegate them, you can renegotiate them or you can decide that you’ll never do them. That last one is tough, but necessary. You can’t do everything you want to do, everything you need to do, and especially everything you feel like you should do, but don’t really have to do. At some point, you have to eliminate some of the things on your list. Eliminating the wants is hard. It is hard to give up on something you want to do. Eliminating the shoulds is also hard though, because somewhere along the line you made an agreement with yourself that you would take care of these things. It doesn’t matter that they aren’t really important or enjoyable; you made an agreement with yourself. At some point though, you have to cut out the shoulds, or you’re going to end up eliminating too many wants.
So, I hit the button. I deleted the 92,452 emails. There was a momentary feeling of regret, but there was also relief. Those 92,452 things had been eliminated from my to-do list with the click of a button. I was free. I could start over.
I’ve tried a lot of different email management systems, but recently I moved to the idea of keeping nothing older than 90 days. I already had email organized by who sent it (sometimes broadly, as in the massive miscellaneous category). This week, I zapped everything in the various categories that was over 90 days old. I got rid of thousands of emails. I think this system will work for me.
I have almost 300 email messages in my In-box. I was trying to keep it to less than a hundred, but well, let’s just say that didn’t happen. Most of those emails aren’t anything valuable, but, like you said, they’re the past. I can imagine that it was a tough decision to delete over 90,000 emails, but I can also imagine your sense of relief after doing it. I should find some way of managing my emails too…
John,
I’m getting better about deleting old messages and marking things off my to-do list that I realize I’ll never do. Still too many of both … but getting better.
Congratulations on getting rid of 92,000+ emails.
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How long did it take you to accumulate that much email?
You have too many subscriptions, too many people know your email address and send you stuff, or you’re not reading them fast enough.
Hey Humans;
I find it very intrigueing how you manage to take something so simple as deleting e-mails and explore it to the point where one can really understand the dilemma one feels at that point. But… how do you guys get so many e-mails? I stole my computer and got my account perhaps three years ago. I’ve got almost all my e-mails still on there and am just hitting eight hundred. How is almost a hundred thousand possible?? I believe I’d go crazy if I was that popular. Solitude is my solace.
I would say I accumulated the email over the course of four years. That is how long I have had that account. Most of the junk is from companies I have bought something from, especially travel companies and such.
It must be that time of year. Yesterday, I cleaned out my inbox. There was all kinds of stuff in there. I’ve been steadily unsubscribing to things that I don’t really read, and now with a much cleaner inbox, I am going to work to keep it that way.
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Four years! Holy cow. I clean up my email every week. No excuses. Maybe I have more free time.
I recently lost my e-mail archive through a hard drive failure (yes, I know, back-up, back-up!). I wasn’t sure how many messages it was, but both archive files were about 1.5Gb each, so it was quite a few.
I thought the world had come to an end, all hope was lost. I’ve since realised how little I consulted my archive and that I didn’t really need them. Any files I had were on the server and so the e-mails were largely redundant. I would recommend a good clear-out occasionally, it’s quite therapeutic I found, albeit by accident.
I weed frequently, but I know what you mean.
However, I also made a little resolution back in January.
I am writing letters. By hand. With a fountain pen.
Reason being — it’s very easy to delete old emails and things. What kind of memories will you have in 20 years time?
I dug out old letters the other month, chuckling about what was important to me 20 years ago. They were love letters to my then (and still) partner. I also have the letters he sent me, all neatly bundled up and stashed.
Think about it.
Where are the text messages and emails from today going to be in 20 years time?
Nowhere.
Do yourself a favor and occasionally forgo the computer and write a letter instead.
Congrats! I’m a pack rat in every sense of the word – both in real life and also in the cyber world, so I’m still working on getting rid of all those excess e-mails I really don’t need, and I wasn’t even close to the number of old messages you had. Thanks for sharing!
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I recently moved all my email accounts to Gmail so I have a totally clean inbox at the moment. My desktop computer does however contain over 3,500 emails in outlook express. I am now using my laptop and I have to admit I haven’t missed any of those emails at all. I am going to leave them on the desktop until the end of the week and then I will delete them. For now they feel like security, just in case I need anything, but I will free myself come the end of the month.
Amanda
John,
I’ve awarded you the Premio Dardos Award. You can read the details on my blog. No need to do anything unless you want to; I just wanted to recognize your blog.
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John, wow! This post is so true. The things we hold on to because we may want, need or do them someday. Letting go is freeing and can bravely help us let go in other areas. What a wonderful post and congrats on hitting delete!
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Thanks for posting this and coming clean about your emails…I am so embarassed about how many I have if someone is looking over my shoulder I quickly switch to another site!!…..I tend to hoard other things as well!!
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Wow! That’s a lot. I hit delete all day long and get a little surge of excitement every time
Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero presentation has really stuck with me.
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