Saturday, 29 October 2016

Email bankruptcy | Digital decluttering

If you're like me and have thousands of unread emails in your email account this will help...


I had exactly 5642 unread emails. Every time I looked at that little read dot in the mail app on my phone with thousands of emails shouting at me to be read my energy dipped.

So, I decided to set myself the task of deleating 100 emails every day. If I stuck to this daily habit the cumbersome build-up would be cleared in less than two months. It meant I could start afresh and with a clean slate would feel much more productive. Well, that was the plan...

The relatively easy task of deleting or marking 100 emails as 'read' every day didn't take long, but it was monotonous and boring and I quickly forgot or avoided doing it. So the emails kept building and in turn I was feeling less and less productive.

But then, the other day while I was listening to a podcast (on happiness as it turns out!) I learned that there's a really quick way to get that little red circle to zero - declare email bankruptcy. It doesn't delete emails but it does mark them all as 'read'.

This is how you do it...

  • Log in to your gmail account.
  • In the search bar at the very top of the gmail page, where the blue magnifying glass icon is, type is:unread.
  • The screen will change and all your unread emails will appear.
  • Next click "All" in the "Select" checkbox. This is at the top left above the list of messages. All your unread emails will be selected at the same time - thanks be to God!
  • Then click the hyperlink (the underlined part) in the text that pops up at the top of the page that says  "All 50 conversations on this page are selected. Select all conversations that match this search"
  • Finally click "Mark as read". Located in the button at the top of the page marked "More"
  • You will be asked if "You are sure?". Click YES!!!

And that's it. A digital declutter, a fresh start. And they're all still there in your inbox just in case you ever need to reference back. I figured if an email was really important the sender will get in touch again.

Onwards and upwards!



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