Email overload is a common problem, but some have found relief through email bankruptcy, which involves deleting an entire email account and starting over. The first step is to save important contact addresses, then delete all current emails. It’s important to compose an email statement before permanently closing the account. Archiving older emails can also help clean up the inbox.
As with many other innovations designed to make our lives easier, email has become a new complication for many people. The e-mail account has become the new “in-box” for personal and professional communication, and like its predecessor it seems to be growing unabated. Some emails may contain important or urgent information, while others require personal responses or updates. While email overload can become an 800-pound gorilla for some of us, others have found relief through a process called email bankruptcy.
Filing for email bankruptcy means deleting an entire email account and starting over. Email failure may seem like an extreme action to take, but it can also be a liberating experience for those who feel pressured by building up stacks of email. Replying to older emails often reduces the amount of time available for other projects and tasks.
When filing email bankruptcy, the first step is to delete all important contact addresses from your existing email folder. These addresses should be copied and pasted into the Bcc line of an email addressed to yourself. The message should be short and direct: “I, John Smith, have filed for bankruptcy by email. I will delete all existing emails from my account. If you have already sent important messages or files to my e-mail address, please send them again.”, or words to that effect. The contact list can be saved in a new folder for quick reference.
The next step (and some may say the most satisfying) would be to select all current emails for deletion. It could be several hundred or even thousands of emails, but they will all become one electronic story. Of course, the deleted account may still receive new emails, but at least you’ll have a better opportunity to deal with these new messages as they arrive. Many people with email accounts often find that many of their older archived messages have little or no relevance, but were kept on hand mostly out of a sense of obligation.
For those considering email bankruptcy, it is vital that you gather your contact information and compose your email statement before permanently closing your email account. Some emails can be recovered electronically by experts, but you should consider most emails completely gone after deletion. You might also consider moving older emails to a different file for archiving instead of your main inbox folder. This can have the same cleaning effect as an email failure without completely deleting older but still relevant emails.
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