You're invited to... unsubscribe

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks furiously unsubscribing from every newsletter that has landed in my inbox. My peak email count was an average of 160 emails a day. My inbox was out of control. Going on a business trip for 3-4 days meant that I came back to more than 600 emails to slog through. I even calculated that even if it takes only 1 second to press delete per email, that’s a full 10 minutes of hitting delete to get rid of the rubbish. But the menial task of binary prioritisation takes longer than 1 second per mail and I’m still left with a substantial amount of emails that actually do need to be addressed.

As I went through the task of unsubscribing, I recognised that I had signed up to some newsletters but many seemed to have just arrived on their own. Then there are the emails that are plain spam with no option to unsubscribe. You’d hope your junk mail filters would take care of them, although mine doesn’t seem to be doing such a good job. Of the 160 per day, there are maybe only 30 that actually need my attention.

I was reluctant to embark on this unsubscribe exercise since I’d done it once before and found that somehow the number of spam emails I received had increased rather than decreased. I also tried creating rules for emails I didn’t want, so that they’d get filtered directly to my Junk folder and when my Mail programme decided to run an update, all my rules were lost. Besides, I began to notice that many newsletters from the same place use different email addresses to send from, perhaps to avoid exactly this kind of filtering system.

Emails are an issue for many of us. I don’t know anyone who complains about getting too few emails. They take up focus, time, energy and headspace. As they arrive, their ping, banner and announcement distract us from our work which makes us lose more focus, energy, time and headspace.

Nonetheless, I decided to allocate some time and go through the exercise of unsubscribing once again and here is what I did:

1.     I chose 5 newsletters that I actually do read every time they land up in my inbox – and I mean every time – no compromises. Those get to stay.

2.     Once the process began an interesting thing happened. I started to feel bad… for the people I know personally who send emails and I’d now unsubscribe – would they know that I had unsubscribed, would they be upset? Regardless, the war on emails continued.

3.     I noticed the newsletters offering the fabulous course or retreat that I would so love to attend… one day. What if I missed out on getting to know about that one retreat that I would actually attend? A bit of FOMO crept in but I continued on.

4.     I noticed the newsletters that I never did subscribe to and wondered how they ever landed up in my inbox.

5.     I noticed the emails that didn’t have an unsubscribe option at all. I created an email rule to filter to junk for these.

Unrelenting, I continued on my mission and realised that there are other ways to stay in touch. For example, you can like Facebook pages instead of subscribing to emails so that if you want to know what is going on, you can actually go to the page and check it out – on your own terms, at your own time

Now that I’m not constantly bombarded with exciting events and promises, I actually feel more focused, happier. I now know that I don’t need to hear about all the events and outings I’m clearly not going to attend, even if they sound wonderful.

While there are definitely newsletters that I’ve unsubscribed from that keep popping back into my inbox, I’ve noticed my daily emails have now reduced to somewhere around 80 and that the number of spam emails has also reduced.

I feel clearer, cleaner and don’t need to get bogged down with facing that dreaded inbox, spending 10 minutes a day hitting the delete button.

I’ve also created a second email address for those times I do want to read an article that requires a sign-in. That inbox can get as full as it likes. I never look at it and no-one else gets that email address.

In the meantime… I invite you to unsubscribe, with these strategies:

1.     Choose 5 to keep

2.     For the rest, unsubscribe

3.     Create a second email address for sign-ups

4.     Sign up on social media to check-in intentionally

5.     Create an email rule to filter spam to junk

6.     Unsubscribe some more

What strategies have worked for you in managing your inbox?

How to revive a habit? 7 blogs in 7 days

 

I decided to set myself a challenge: write 7 blog articles in 7 days. One per day.

The reason for this challenge was to get myself going with writing again. Writing is something I love doing, I have ideas for blog pieces running around in my head every day and yet, the last blog I wrote was two years ago… 2 years ago!

Its funny how quickly you can get out of a habit and stay out of it.

After publishing my book, Courage to Lead (Jacana 2014), I seem to have just stopped writing. As any author will know, writing a book is a gruelling exercise. The deadlines, revisions, rethinking what you want to say and going over every sentence at least ten times before its given the final okay takes time, energy and commitment. In the process you lose loads of sleep and somewhere down the line you can lose enthusiasm for writing and lose some of the passion for your message. In fact, I have a confession to make. I haven’t read my book in its entirety after the final go-ahead to print. It’s something I have really wanted to do but I’ve just lost the energy. With the birth of my book, the launch, the PR, the excitement and sense of achievement something got lost in that I just stopped writing. No blogs, no articles. Just silence…

I’ve been thinking about this over the last months and wondering how to get started again. What will give me that kickstart to launch back into the writing habit?

And two things happened.

Thing 1

I read an article about writing, by Martha Beck, who said that her first draft is always really, really bad. In fact, to get herself going on an article (usually with a deadline) she gives herself the challenge and permission to write the crappiest first draft ever, as long as she puts pen to paper. I decided to use this idea and give myself the challenge and permission to write really bad first drafts, as long as it gets me writing again.

With multiple revisions, you can always fix it, change it, reduce it – but just getting the first draft done is the most powerful step to getting going.

Thing 2

I started having ideas of what to write about rolling around in my head and I began writing down my blog titles, as these ideas came up. The excitement to write began to awaken within me as I realised that each article didn’t need to be very long. It could be a short comment about something that I had noticed in my day or an idea that I wanted to share. A blog piece found its way into my inbox and I decided to do a word count on it. 400 words – that’s how short it was. That’s pretty doable.

But I still wasn’t writing…

This is where the idea of 7 blogs in 7 days came to me. First, it reminded me of the Sting song ‘7 brides for 7 brothers’ and Sting’s music makes me happy. Second, to get a blog article written every day, you have to know that you will only manage really bad first drafts and nothing more. The aim was to spill the ideas on to the page and get my mind working in the direction of writing.

The 7-day challenge was not about posting the blogs. In fact, they would not be ready for posting after 7 days. And there are advantages to this approach besides unblocking my writer’s block. If I wrote 7 blogs and posted one per week, I would have 7 weeks of material taken care of and could continue to write at a much less frenetic pace with a buffer in place. It would get me out of the stuckness and back into the arena. The blogs don’t need to be perfect, just really bad first drafts. I could work on the revisions when I was ready to post them. And finally, a great advantage would be even more material since I’m already planning my 7^th blog which will be what I learnt from the experience.

So here goes… This is Day 1 of 7 blogs in 7 days. Blog 1 is now written. In fact all 7 are written and are filed away as really bad first drafts so stay tuned as I unleash them one at a time.

Now, over to you…

What habit have you let go of that you would like to revive?

How can you create your own 7 xxx (fill in the blank) in 7 days to get you going?

Remember the principles:

1.     Give yourself permission to do a really bad job as a starting point

2.     Just get started – keep it short, keep it simple

3.     Do this really badly for 7 days

4.     See what happens… what needs revision, fixing, publishing, more commitment?

5.     Share your journey in the comments below – I’d love to hear