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Clutter from The Outside
I’ve had an interesting relationship with clutter this past month. Even though there’s been a little headway dealing with the clutter of my own making, I’ve also had to deal with plenty of clutter which has been externally imposed on me recently. I am very aware of how that clutter from the outside is draining my time and creativity, leaving little energy for myself.
Not to fear, this essay isn’t going to turn into a pity party! I freely admit that much of the clutter that’s in my life is of my own making. And as long as the issues beneath the clutter remain unresolved, I will feel their impact and have that much less energy available for myself. I’m making slow yet steady progress on those issues.
No, what I’m talking about are those irritating and time consuming situations that require tracking and multiple follow-up contacts to get resolved. Things like the prescription mail order refill that never was delivered. The overpayment refund check that took 30 days to be issued. The error in the paycheck that still needs correcting. The re-work of car repairs. Collectively they create extra mental clutter for me, and there just happened to be a multitude of such issues coming up for me this month.
A more predictable source of external clutter, however, is email. Spam blockers aside, hundreds and hundreds of emails come across both work and personal email servers each week. Without some directed attention on how to manage all these messages, one can quickly lose focus and lose sight of what messages are important. Here are some tips I’ve used to help deal with the email clutter:
At the end of each day, I send an email to myself with the subject line of “break for [next day’s date]”. I leave it unread in my email inbox (so it stays red in color) to help visually break up my email into daily chunks. It also helps me retrieve messages that I know came in on a certain day, even if I cannot recall the sender’s name.
As email strings develop, I tend to delete the previous versions. “Me, too!” and “thank you!” emails get deleted as soon as they are read---I’m glad to receive and be aware of them, but they do not need to be saved.
If a report can be located on a website, I’ll look for it there and not in my email.
I contact list owners and ask to be removed from distribution lists that are no longer relevant to my work or interests. Of course, you can delete those messages as they come in, however, in the long run, if you’re really no longer interested in the information you might as well unsubscribe from the list.
Build an archiving/filing system for email messages that helps you locate the information you need quickly. Create a “To Do” folder for those emails that ask for a response of some sort from you. Create project-related folders to track discussions and collate survey responses that come through the email. Do review the contents of these folders regularly and delete what’s no longer relevant! Don’t let them become the virtual closets of clutter.
Most weeks I’ll go back through the most recent week of email and delete anything that is no longer necessary to keep. I always find more messages I can delete the second time through.
Even though it feels like an inordinate amount of external clutter has filled my life lately, I’m just dealing with it, knowing that in time there won’t be so much. I’m putting my attentions to the issues and clutter that I do have control over, in order to free up that energy for myself and the activities that give me the most enjoyment. Onward!
--Dot
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