"INBOX ZERO" (I did it!!)

Well, folks, I've done it. I figured out how to get to the illusive state of having no unread mail in my email account.

"Impossible!"

"Nobody's ever been there! How can you say it exists?!"

"Fake news!"

I'm here to tell you, it's true. And let me also say, it feels sooooooo gooooood.

I want others to feel as pacified as I do about, so I'm sharing my secret. Here's how I did it.

First, I wanted to make sure I didn't throw out anything important. But going through and clicking on every single box beside the bad ones would take, oh, I don't know....

4000+ emails x avg 3 seconds/email = 12,000 seconds, divided by 60 seconds per minute, divided by 60 minutes per hour......3 hours straight.

Now, I no this doesn't seeeeem bad, but imagine going through your emails for anything longer than 20 minutes. It's grueling, and if you broke it up, you'd likely actually never get ahead, because it would take you 9 days. Plus, as will be noted, your inbox may just fill right up again with spam.

They say every email you send out equals 1.7 emails you get back...

So, I decided to do the opposite, and it WORKED. It continues to work for me, rather well.

Instead of looking for the bad emails, I looked for the good ones. The trick is to scan through the inbox, and look for anything that looks even a little important, and STAR IT.

Then, go right above the boxes, and select "ALL UNSTARRED MESSAGES" - and with a wave of your magic wand, press DELETE.

Now, instead of the 3 seconds average per bad email, you're spending roughly 30 seconds per page.

100 emails per page @ 30 seconds of scanning per page x 40 page = 1200 seconds, divided by 60 seconds per minute, divided by 60 minutes per hour......20 minutes.

I've slimmed down my 9 day, 20 minute per day exercise in insanity to just 1 simple 20 minute adventure!

"But what about the spam?!" You ask, fervently.

That's a great question, but calm down, because Jonas has the medicine. This is the one you have to be diligent on, but at least it's not a huge endeavour.

Everyday, when all those new "GREAT DEALS" emails come in, click the unsubscribe button on each. I know, I know, it's still a bit tedious, but trust me, any day you do this, you're getting that much closer to your lean email goals. And really, each day, you'll be surprised at how few there are, and how few keep coming in. After the 5th day or so, you'll see at least 80% of these evil little weasels go away, never to return. The most annoying companies send emails every day, and the least annoying ones every month. So try to do this once a month, and you should be clear of mind and email in no time flat.

So there's just one more thing to worry about:

How do I figure out who's evil and who's not going forward? Who the #$% is sharing my email address???

There's a trick to this too.

DID YOU KNOW: You own the rights and control of your email address and ALSO EVERY + iteration of it as well.

Example: my email address is [email protected], so I can write [email protected], or [email protected], or anything else I want to write, and it will always come to my email.

SO, whenever you're filling out some new subscription form, whether it be to get your hands on the FREE E-BOOK from the latest whatever guru, or 10% your purchase at SOME RANDOM ONLINE STORE, just append your email address with [email protected].

Track those insidious little codswallops.

I hope this helps you like it did me. I had been sitting helpless, drowning in pointless communications from so many places and people, anxious that something important had been buried. Nothing like being at the airport a little late, frantically scanning through slow-to-load messages, trying to find that damned confirmation number. Now, I've got a real handle on this, and I can remain in a state of email enlightenment, for the rest of my digital days.

Good luck out there, though I'm sure you won't need it.