So I’ve kind of made a commitment now. Like my “old” blogging friend Tony I decided that subscribing for a year might incentivise me further to keep updating. I have always had high standards for what constitutes wasting my own money on my own stuff. Also, on a blog about not shopping, it gave me severe cognitive dissidence to then have advertising scattered around. I was curious to see what advertising would be served on a blog about minimalism but not interested enough to watch it happen.
I spent yesterday clearing out my inbox (wait it’s not quite as impressive as it might sound). Even with a pre sorting algorithm working in the background that was supposed to be filtering the “bacon” emails to a sub folder I had 500 unread emails in that folder, much of it advertising that had not been filtered into the bacon(advertising) folders. I systematically unsubscribed from all the overt advertising. That was the easy bit but yes there was a lot of them; 50 would be my conservative guess. Everything from my dr booking app with deals on gym membership to every shopping centre I’ve ever logged into the wifi of, to clothing brands I ordered from as a gift to others, to stationery and optical to language learning or meditation apps I tried for “three minutes” years ago. These were easy. Even from my favourite brands I had no problem unsubscribing: my logic being that if and when I need anything I will remember where to go. I then just did a select all-delete move on the sub folder that was intended to collect all the advertising emails.
The next category of emails to weed were the various content creator types. Some of them have good actual content in the email itself, (these along with essay type subscriptions I sent to @read) but many are just advertising copy with a tease and a call to action. These are harder to unsubscribe from for me because these are for the most part small business owners trying to (presumable) make a living selling courses or things designed to assist me to improve myself or to be more efficient. Bit sad lest I be letting them down. But while education is still on the list of allowed activity: self development is not, beyond the internet and what I already have and know.
So yes I’m now inbox zero!! I’ve engaged in meaningful emails as a direct result; become aware of one opportunity I missed out on as a direct result of the email getting buried (cautionary tale) and have a “healthy” stack of reading to work through slowly
wheely minimalist 