DIGITAL MINIMALISM
3 Mental Health Benefits of Tidying Your Email Inbox
If you can’t take a picture of mental clutter doesn’t mean it’s non-existent.
No ones likes checking their email every hour to be on top of their day.
Most emails — if not filtered manually — are trash even after automated spam filtering.
I had a disorganised way to manage my inbox when I only cleaned it when the mental clutter became unbearable.
You won’t realise the impact of mental clutter unless you see the results of digital minimalism.
Here are three ways cleaning your inbox will improve your mental health, with the steps you can follow to achieve the same results I did.
#1. Schedule a reminder for time management.
If an email doesn’t need an immediate response, I don’t attend to it. I leave it in the inbox as it is.
I keep treating all emails the same way every day except at 2 pm.
2 pm is the time where I sit and decide:
- Which emails are worth responding to?
- Which email should I archive?
- Clearing the spam folder to reduce carbon emissions.
#2. Use the “pin” feature to retain the essential emails.
If you want to respond to an email — but the urgency is not needed — how will you make sure to attend to the email when you come back at your scheduled time?
The “pin” feature is helpful because it removes the mental problem of analysis-paralysis by conserving all your essential — but not urgent — emails in one place to comfort you with certainty.
The more certain we are about the future, the more focussed we are in the present.
3. Do regular purge sessions for a healthy inbox.
It’s my favourite. Like you don’t allow toxic people in your life, don’t give your email to newsletters that don’t add value to your life.
Whenever I sign up for an e-commerce website for online shopping, they entice me to sign up for their newsletter.
We agree to sign up because the process is one click, but if the frequency — and content quality — of the newsletter is annoying and the email feels like a sales conversation, you know what to do:
Unsubscribe dirty emails from your life. Don’t feed your mind with email-porn.
Final words
I have no idea how many emails are there in my inbox. That's because only a tiny percentage is valuable.
At 2 pm, I see my pinned list to read the emails and take appropriate action. The process hardly takes 10 minutes.
For the rest of the day, I do these three things:
- Respond to urgent emails.
- Move important — but not urgent — emails to the pinned list.
- Archive everything else so that my inbox doesn’t look flooded.
If you also regularly clean your inbox based on the frequency which suits you, your mental clutter will fade gradually.
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Sanjeev is a writer, mentor and recovering shopaholic. He writes about lifelong learning, productivity, relationships, and practical psychology for everyday life. When he’s not busy with his muse, he is sweating either in a workout or emulating outdoor games in his home because of the pandemic. He also chronicles his writing and fitness journey on Instagram. He’s adventurous on Twitter too.
