How to Simplify Your Digital Life: Decluttering Your Emails 101

Do you have thousands of unread emails? I know some of you are sitting mouth agape at the thought of thousands of unread emails, but it happens. To me. Regularly. 

And I’ve tried sorting the emails one by one into relevant folders, which sounds like such a nice organized idea except that I’d rather put a needle in my eye than hand sort through  two thousand emails. 

So I've devised this fool proof system to deal with it. I know that sounds really cheesy, but guys it is the simplest simple-living hack that has totally changed the email game for me. A clean inbox leaves me feeling so prepared for the day. 

Step 1. Display as Many Emails as Possible

Set your email to display as many emails as possible. In gmail right now that’s 100 and can be found under your settings.  

Step 2. Select All Emails. 

Don’t panic. We’ll get you sorted out in a moment.

Step 3. Keep Just What you Need - One Week’s Worth

Unselect any emails you need for the foreseeable future going back ONE WEEK. That's it. Everything in your inbox will be fresh and relevant after this.

Step 4. One Massive Folder

This is the part where the magic happens. Just move them into a folder named “Archived (today's date)”. 

Empty your inbox by doing this page after page until you've archived the whole inbox minus those few emails you saved.  Remember to uncheck the emails you are reserving as they move to the top of each page. You don’t want to accidentally archive them. 

And ta-da, a user-friendly inbox with only what you need for the immediate future. 

If, and it rarely happens, you actually need to refer to an ancient email, you need only go into your archived file and search for a keyword.  After a decade or so you can safely delete your oldest archived folders. 

Step 5. The trick to keeping it clean (for a while anyways)

For the first few days, be really attentive to your emails and unsubscribe from anything you can. (Except my newsletter of course!) Less mail coming in means less to filter through later. 

Isn't that a great little hack,? Now you can have a clean inbox without deleting anything that might be important. I hope a manageable inbox brings you the joy it brings me.