Sharon Dale is our Productivity Ninja, based in the north of England.
She will be hosting our How to Get Things Done public workshop in Halifax on 31st January
Book your place here (not in Halifax? Click here to see our other How To Get Things Done training)
In this post she explains how she reclaimed time in her busy schedule, by unsubscribing to a host of email newsletters and mailshots.
Since New Year’s Day I have been doing some clearing out.
This is customary for me. Each year I feel the need to make some changes (read improvements) at this time of year.
This year I realised that there are lots of newsletters and marketing email’s which I have subscribed to over time but am no longer reading. What I noticed is that each time I go into my mailbox I automatically delete these and whilst this is not taking up a lot of time, sometimes it steals more attention than it should.
I was reminded this week that there are 168 hours in a week, that is all and it is impossible to create more time. All we can do is make sure that we are giving our attention to the right things.
So I decided it was time to get rid of these attention grabbing, mainly marketing emails about old interests for good. I have gone against type and tried not to worry about recording anything and decided to use my admittedly poor memory and deal with any laggards later on.
Some of these emails are very simple to unsubscribe from, you click on a link at the end of the message and reach a page which generally thanks you for your interest and tells you that you have successfully unsubscribed.
Some ask if you are sure and you have to press a button or another link (do not back out now – press the button!), and yet others require you to remember a login and password that you set up some time ago and this turns into a multiple action project. These are the ones I will deal with, one at a time, probably as part of a post weekly review tidy.
I already feel better; for a few seconds work each time I am incrementally reducing my inbox clutter.
If you would like to learn more about managing your attention and getting things done, get along to my How to Get Things Done workshop in Halifax on Friday (31st Jan 2013)
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