Article Contributed by Terri Zwierzynski
If you are like me, your inbox is full of emails you intend to read “someday”. Newsletters are a particularly insidious culprit; full of info-packed articles, tips and resources, we often save them to read later, only to find ourselves accumulating more and more email, and never finding the time to sit down to that task.
Why do we keep them? Because we believe that possibly, somewhere in there lies the magic answer to some problem we’ve been experiencing. And then we feel guilty every time we open our email, because we haven’t gotten around to reading that vitally important information that might change our business or our life for the better.
And so our inbox is overflowing with:
• articles with info that we think we need to learn
• links to products or services we might need to buy
• ebooks we think we need to read
I’m here to tell you that you don’t need any of those emails. In fact, you need to delete them — and you’ll move your business ahead much faster as a result.
Three tips for cleaning out your inbox:
1. Let go of your need to hold onto this information. I can hear you moaning now: “but maybe I’ll never find this info again!” Trust me…i f it’s an important concept, someone will write about it again, and it’ll end up in your inbox (or your Twitter stream, or your Facebook news, or a blog you follow) again. If it doesn’t — it wasn’t really that important.
If it’s a great, not-to-be-missed product or service, you’ll find it again, because people will keep talking about it! If you don’t hear about it again…it was probably a ho-hummer anyway.
So be brave, and hit that delete key with confidence that if it’s really important, it will show up on your radar again, just when you need it!
2. Look at all the newsletters you have accumulated…and unsubscribe from AT LEAST half of them. Then delete all the back issues, too. We sign up for newsletters for all kinds of perfectly good reasons — but with the plethora of really great information out there, it’s easy to get carried away.
The bottom line is you don’t need most of this information…you already have 90% of the info you need to run your business. You know what to do…searching for more information is just another way to procrastinate, give in to the fear that you don’t know what you are doing, etc. Trust that you are ready…and get busy implementing, not researching more!
3. Devise a system to read or discard email immediately. Spend just a few seconds deciding whether something is worth reading right away — and if it is not, delete it! If you plan to read it, do it right then. Alternatively, put the “read soon” emails into a separate folder and then put time on your calendar every Friday to clean out that folder — read and delete so the folder is EMPTY at the end of your Friday session. Imagine the feeling of accomplishment you’ll have when you’ve done your “research” for the week!
Even better — with a cleaner inbox, you’ll find you have more room to get things done…because you won’t be constantly looking at an inbox full of things to read!
About the Author:
Terri Zwierzynski is a self-employed business strategist and marketing consultant to solo entrepreneurs, and a grassroots promoter of the solo entrepreneur lifestyle. She runs Solo-E.com, the resource website for the self-employed which attracts thousands of solo home business owners monthly from over 100 countries on six continents (and was recently named a finalist for “Website of the Year” in the 4th Annual Stevie® Awards for Women in Business). Terri is also the co-author of 136 Ways To Market Your Small or Solo Business.
