Whether you use Gmail for your personal or professional needs, having a clean inbox will give you an incredible sense of satisfaction. When you log in to your account in the morning, there’s nothing worse than seeing 100 new emails which need a response. There are so many reasons why everyone should aim to have an empty inbox, and these are just seven of the top arguments to persuade you to aim for this in the future.
Smarter Faster Better
by Charles Duhigg
⏱ 15 minutes reading time
🎧 Audio version available
Never Miss An Urgent Message Again
When you pull up your inbox to find thousands of messages, it can be so easy to overlook the most urgent ones. You’ll never have to search through dozens of messages to find the one you were working on yesterday. When you minimize the number of emails in your inbox, you’ll be able to focus on only the ones that need a response today. We highly recommend unsubscribing to junk mail for this reason so that you aren’t distracted by messages that add no value to your life.
You’ll Be More Likely to Take Action
As with anything in life, the more issues we face, the more likely we’ll feel overwhelmed. If you struggle to find motivation each day at work, your overflowing inbox might be to blame for this. When you get your inbox down to a manageable level, you’ll find that you are more likely to take action and have control over your life again. You won’t be scared to open your inbox each morning, only to find hundreds of urgent messages you need to reply to.
Connect With Those Who Are Important
If you have separate personal and professional accounts, it can be easy to neglect your personal inbox. This is the account you are more likely to use for your friends and family. As these are the people who are truly important in your life, you don’t want to neglect the chance to catch up and share what you’ve been up to. When you are more organized with your inbox, you’ll be able to see who you have and haven’t replied to recently. You can then dedicate the time to keeping in touch with your family and building on the most important relationships in your life.
You’ll Feel a Sense of Satisfaction
For people who’ve spent their whole career with an overflowing inbox, there’s nothing more satisfying than reaching inbox zero. The minute you clear your Gmail inbox, you’ll feel like you’ve accomplished so much. In addition, you’ll soon notice the benefits of keeping your inbox empty, which will encourage you to keep up with this in the long run. As with anything in life, getting started is the most challenging task, so the sooner you start deleting emails, the better. Then, you’ll be able to take back control of your time and energy to focus on what’s important to you.
Your Gmail Inbox Will Be Less Stressful To Open Each Day
Do you open your Gmail account each morning only to get a sinking feeling in your stomach? If the answer is yes, this is a clear sign that it’s time for a change. You shouldn’t have to dread starting work each day due to an overflowing inbox. While email offers so many advantages to companies and individuals today, it also adds a lot of unnecessary stress. Emails are often marked as urgent when they aren’t, and we are left feeling pressured to answer every message before the end of the day. The fewer emails you have to tackle in the day ahead, the less stressed you’ll feel when you start work each day.
Quicker to Search for Crucial Messages
Our eyes can only take in so much information on our computers, and this is particularly true when it comes to your Gmail account. When you are searching for a message manually, it will be quicker to find it from within ten messages instead of 100. The same goes for using the computer search tool, as you’ll find there are fewer results when using common search terms. You’ll save time and energy each time you look for something you are working on, which will also result in less frustration in the long run. We could all do with minimizing our stress levels at work, and clearing out your inbox is a great way to do this.
You Don’t Need to Keep Emails Forever
There are only a few situations in which you need to keep your emails for many years. For the most part, an email is dealt with and can then be deleted. Just as you wouldn’t keep physical mail for five years, you don’t need to do the same with a virtual message. You’ll find that life is so much easier when you reduce the number of emails you have to deal with. If something is truly critical to your life or business, create a separate folder of saved emails that you can refer to again in the future. However, make sure you keep on top of these folders and clear them out from time to time. You’ll likely find that after a few months, you can delete almost any message you save, as you never need to refer to it again.
A clean inbox is one of the most satisfying feelings in the world, but it’s something that many of us don’t even think about attempting. We recommend starting small and just deleting five or ten extra emails a day, to begin with. Once you start to get this momentum and notice some of the benefits we mentioned above, you’ll soon want to continue until you reach inbox zero. You’ll find that your work and personal life are much less stressful when you carry out this task, giving you the time and energy you need to spend on what’s really important in life.
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