Over the weekend I decided to tackle something looming… something giant… something that has been a source of stress for me for many years… my inbox. That was probably pretty anticlimactic and I know it sounds kind of funny as I write it, but it’s true. I remember giving Jeff a hard time years ago because his e-mail inbox was in the thousands. I told him that it stressed me out just looking at it and asked him “Do you ever delete your e-mails?! How can anyone possible have that many e-mails?! Doesn’t it stress you out?!” He laughed (thinking it was funny that simply looking at the number of e-mails in his inbox would be a source of stress for me), told me he did indeed delete e-mails, and that was that. (Just for humor’s sake, Jeff asked me last night if I wanted to know how many e-mails he currently had. Have a guess? 9,999. Why? Because that’s as high as it goes. After that they put a plus sign next to the number. His has a plus sign.)
When Bracken napped every day, I took that time to get my online work done. I responded to e-mails, updated my blog, communicated with customers, and posted new items in our shop. It was tricky to get everything done in the amount of time I had, so I had to be efficient with my time online, stay focused on my tasks, and do my best to ignore the many distractions on the web. After he stopped napping (after last Christmas), I tried to get most of my computer time after he went to bed or before he woke up in the morning. Honestly, most nights I was too tired to be very effective in my work, so morning time was my first choice. However, that didn’t leave all that much time. (I won’t claim that I was fantastic at managing my inbox while the naps were still happening, but it did get more challenging when the naps stopped.)
What would happen is that I would receive an e-mail that took some time to reply to and I would wait for the time and space to fully reply to it. That can be a slippery slope, though, because when I didn’t find that time and space the e-mail would get lost, buried quickly under a pile of new e-mails. Before I knew it, my inbox felt like it had gotten out of control. I kept hoping the next day I could get some time to catch up, but then the next day would come and that magical opportunity I was waiting for never seemed to happen. Opening my laptop in the mornings started making me feel stressed, rather than excited to start the day. Getting on my computer made me feel overwhelmed and constantly behind and those feelings dampened my productivity. (Don’t get me wrong, I love receiving e-mails, I just didn’t like the feeling of getting so behind in keeping up with them.)
Stephanie Pearl McPhee wrote a hilarious chapter on e-mails in her book ‘The Amazing Thing About the Way It Goes: Stories of Tidiness, Self-Esteem, and Other Things I Gave Up On.’ It still makes me laugh when I think about it, her unexpected way of dealing with a mountain of e-mails. (That book is a great one if you need a good laugh.) Over time I began to understand more fully where she was coming from when she wrote that. Compared to many people, the amount of e-mails I was getting every day would probably not be considered huge, but it was more than I could keep up with.
One day recently I noticed my e-mails were nearing 700. I delete e-mails regularly, but there were many junk mail e-mails I had never even opened, interesting articles I wanted to go back and ready someday, and messages I had meant to reply to. I decided enough was enough, it was time for me to tackle my beast of an inbox. I started by removing myself from nearly all of the e-mail lists I had somehow got signed up for (except for a few favorites.) I felt like I had already done that so many times before, and yet I was still getting too many e-mails, so I got even more radical and removed myself from the e-mails lists of even companies I loved because I never read their newsletters.
After that was done, I sat down and started deleting, deleting, deleting. I was fully in the zone, completely obsessed with shrinking that inbox number. I started replying to some e-mails that were overdue, and then I continued on with my deleting. I would make goals for myself. Get down to 600. Done! Get down to 550. Done! Keep going. I noticed that sometimes the number in the sidebar wouldn’t move, no matter how many e-mails I deleted, but nonetheless the stress was sliding off because I was clearing the clutter. (The tally is only showing unread messages right now. If that means I almost had 700 unread messages to start, then yikes!) On Sunday (the day I totally kicked butt and deleted tons of e-mails), there was an imprint in our couch from where I was sitting, from being in that spot for so long! Though I don’t like to do computer work throughout the day, I made an exception that day, knowing that Bracken could survive hours of me doing that and turn out alright. 🙂
Eventually my inbox number said 7 unread messages!! (Not total e-mails, but still awesome!) I got down to my e-mails from 2010 and have been deleting e-mails like crazy, but I can tell you I still have many more e-mails to delete. The number tally in the sidebar helped inspire me to keep deleting and to have goals to reach, but what I really wanted was not to reach a certain number, but to feel less stress about my inbox. I did the initial clearing and now I need to delve deeper to finish the job, but I must say that I feel much better. It was a big sigh of relief to tackle that project. Though I know it will still be work to keep up with it, now I feel my inbox will be much more manageable.
Lately, on my mind, has been stress. I’ve been thinking of how stressed Jeff and I so often feel, wondering how we can reduce stress in our life. I think many of us feel stressed in many different areas of our lives and though we may not be able to reduce all the stresses all at once, we can at least tackle one area at a time and try to reduce stress as much as possible. Deleting e-mails was a step towards peace for me. It was one area of my life I could have some control over and one area where I could take concrete steps to reduce stress. I wanted to clear my inbox of all the distractions, all the clutter, so I could use my online time more efficiently and more wisely, communicate with others with more ease and less stress, and spend my time on the web doing things that nourish my being. I wanted to feel happy when I opened my computer in the mornings and inspired about my time there.
I’ve also realized something. (This is going to sound obvious to everyone else I’m sure.) I have decided it’s much better to respond to an e-mail and write someone back, even if it is short and you don’t have all the time to devote to it that you would like, than to wait for the perfect time to do so. I had a blog reader write me the most thoughtful and kind e-mail in the spring, and I carried those words in my heart all that time, wanting to convey how much they meant to me. I didn’t want to give her a rushed response, but a slow and thoughtful one to match the thoughtfulness she wrote with. But in the end, I wrote her back in the midst of a noisy family day, and couldn’t quite collect my thoughts fully, but thanked her and finally told her I appreciated her message, rather than just thinking it to myself. Sometimes it’s better to do something, than to wait to do it perfectly. Perfect doesn’t exist anyway. I know it’s good to feel peace inside yourself, no matter what’s going on around you and even in the midst of chaos, but I’m not there yet. I still feel more peaceful when the house is tidy, and my inbox too!