Declare an ’email Amnesty’ to Achieve Inbox Zero
The idea of declaring “e-bankruptcy”—simply deleting all emails in your inbox after a certain date—is so popular that it has its own Wikipedia entry . And it goes beyond email: declaring personal bankruptcy and mass deleting games, movies, and e-books you’re afraid you’ll never play, watch, or read is a common practice among supporters everywhere (including someright here. at Lifehacker). ). But declaring bankruptcy is such a radical step. What if you tried inbox amnesty instead?
What is a mailbox amnesty?
The idea for inbox amnesty comes from Lifehacker health editor Beth Skwarecki, who advocates achieving inbox zero by selecting all your emails and archiving them rather than deleting them. “BOOM,” she says. “You have inbox zero and you will do better in the future.”
While there are tricks you can use to manage your inbox in real time and reduce the number of unread messages ( like the one-tap rule ), there will still be times when your inbox becomes unmanageable. This doesn’t bother some people, but the ever-increasing number on the notification icon makes others feel like they’re going crazy. If this is you, declare inbox amnesty and start over.
Why mailbox amnesty is better than mailbox bankruptcy
While inbox amnesty and bankruptcy are based on the same idea—destroying all emails and starting over with the intention of not letting unread ones get out of control—there is one key difference: Amnesty doesn’t permanently destroy emails, it simply flags their. as read, and removes them out of sight.
This means that you can return to this archive whenever you need to, to find contact information or topics that you might actually need in the future. If you go bankrupt and destroy them all, you won’t be able to reference anything from the past – and you just know that something will happen that will require you to look at an old email that you no longer have.
You can set a reminder for yourself to completely delete archived messages after six months if they’re no longer needed, but as long as they don’t clutter up too much of your storage, feel free to save them in case of an emergency. .