Trim Your Inbox Challenge Tip #4
Trim Your Inbox Challenge Tip #4 - The Cleanse - Keep your inbox clean
By now you should start to feel like things are really starting to slim down your inbox.
But, if you haven't really started noticing a reduction in the number of messages, that's because we haven't talked about what is sticking around in your inbox.
We've talked about what to do with your To-Dos.
We've talked about how to clean out new stuff coming in, but there may still be a pile of stuff sitting there that's in storage.
In order to keep your inbox clean and trim, we have to do a massive let's call it a cleanse.
And that cleanse is going to involve you doing a couple of very simple steps. And because you've done the steps of putting those clear visual indicators on anything without those indicators means it's stuff that belongs in storage, not stuff that belongs in your inbox that you're actively working on.
To start, we're going to just create a new folder or a new label, and we're going to move all that other stuff that we don't have indicators on into that folder or into that label. And then in Gmail, you're going to archive those messages. And in outlook, it's just a quick drag and drop to move them and wallah you're finished!
This does not require a ton of sorting and filtering and wondering, just keep it all in cloud storage. You're not so worried that you're going to go to email jail because you have too much stuff instead, don't sort through it, keep it all there in the cloud.
Even if it's junk, it's going to take more time to sort through it. Just kind of keep it. And if you ever need it, it will surface back up when you need it by doing a search.
So, I like to keep my stuff based on year. So I've just closed out everything for 2020. Anything that wasn't actively being worked on, which I could tell because of what the clear visual indicators, it all got swept and all that swept into a 2020 folder. Interesting to think about just sweeping it away, but now we're starting fresh. So even when stuff does pile up, that's okay.
But at some point, you need to just get rid of the stuff that you're not working on anymore. So that only the active stuff is hanging out in your inbox. I'd never said delete, don't worry. You can keep it all. Even if you don't want to put it in a folder that you might call to sort and get to it when you can. I'm curious to hear back from anybody if they ever do get to it, but we just don't want those piles of hanging out in your inbox.
We're not trying to get you to get rid of it for good, just don't store things in the same place where you're also working on this stuff to do it just doesn't work. So day number four is kind of like that cleanse, take a deep cleansing breath and get rid of all the stuff in storage that you've been storing in your inbox and put it either in a folder or in a label.
Join us all week for the #TrimYourInboxChallenge - https://www.excelandflourish.com/trim-your-inbox-challenge
Join us for the Trim your Inbox Challenge Live Webinar with Jennifer Buchholz!
As part of our #Trimyourinboxchallenge, we invite you to attend the live Q&A webinar with our founder and owner Jennifer Buchholz. During this webinar, Jennifer will answer all your questions from the challenge and share a few other tips and tricks for keeping your inbox slim!
When: Monday, January 18, 1:30 PM CST
Where: Online Webinar