{"id":3087,"date":"2014-05-12T05:00:08","date_gmt":"2014-05-12T10:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhyatt.com\/2009\/09\/is-it-time-to-consider-email-bankruptcy.html"},"modified":"2014-05-12T05:00:08","modified_gmt":"2014-05-12T10:00:08","slug":"email-bankruptcy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fullfocus.co\/email-bankruptcy\/","title":{"rendered":"Declare Email Bankruptcy and Get a Fresh Start"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever felt so overwhelmed by email that you wanted to just delete your email account and start over? If so, you are not alone.<\/p>\n\n<p>Last week, I tweeted a link to one of my most popular blog posts ever, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/michaelhyatt.com\/2008\/06\/yes-you-can-stay-on-top-of-email.html\" title=\"Post: \u201cYes, You Can Stay On Top of Email\u201d\">Yes, You Can Stay on Top of Email<\/a>.\u201d Almost immediately, I received two email messages.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The first person said, \u201cI really want to catch-up on email, but I have over twenty-one hundred unread messages in my inbox. Every time I think about trying to catch up, I want to cry. I don\u2019t know where to begin!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The second person expressed a similar sentiment. She confessed to having more than three thousand unread messages.<\/p>\n<p>My advice was simple: declare email bankruptcy and start over. It\u2019s not worth staying stuck in this state. It\u2019s time for something radical.<\/p>\n<p>You know it\u2019s time for email bankruptcy when:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You have more than five hundred unread email messages in your inbox.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>Your colleagues are complaining about your lack of responsiveness.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>You have have had someone say more than once in the last week, \u201cDid you get the email I sent to you? I haven\u2019t heard back from you.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>You feel anxious or overwhelmed whenever you think about email.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Does this describe you? If so, here are seven steps to declaring email bankruptcy:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Admit the truth.<\/strong> You are too far behind to catch up. Despite your periodic vows to the contrary, you are falling further and further behind. It\u2019s time to do something major to get back on track. Say to yourself, <em>I am declaring email bankruptcy.<\/em>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Open your email program.<\/strong> Once you do this, immediately go offline. You need to \u201cturn off the faucet, so you can drain the tub.\u201d Email bankruptcy won\u2019t take long\u2014perhaps thirty minutes\u2014but you can\u2019t do it if you are constantly being pinged with new messages.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Sort your messages by name.<\/strong> Usually you can do this by clicking on the \u201cFrom\u201d field. Now scan down through the list until you come to messages from your boss, colleagues, or key customers.<\/p>\n<p>Pick the two most recent messages from each and reply to those. But limit yourself to ten messages total. You don\u2019t want to get stuck. If this takes more than fifteen minutes, immediately go to the next step.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Create a new \u201cProcessed Mail\u201d folder.<\/strong> This is the only email folder you will ever need. I explain why in \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/michaelhyatt.com\/2008\/06\/yes-you-can-stay-on-top-of-email.html\" title=\"Post: \u201cYes, You Can Stay On Top of Email\u201d\">Yes, You Can Stay on Top of Email<\/a>.\u201d For now, trust me. Create the folder under your primary inbox. If you are, using Gmail, just use the Archive folder.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Move <em>all<\/em> your messages into this folder.<\/strong> Begin by selecting all your messages (usually \u2318-A on the Mac or Ctrl-A on the PC). Mark them \u201cRead\u201d and drag them into your new Processed Mail folder or Archive.<\/p>\n<p>Now look at your Inbox folder and take in the view. This is what an <em>empty inbox<\/em> looks like. By now, you should be feeling a twinge of hope.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Don\u2019t worry about your unread messages.<\/strong> If a message is important, someone <em>will<\/em> ask you about it. If it wasn\u2019t, you won\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>You don\u2019t need to explain that you have declared email bankruptcy. You don\u2019t need to fib or make excuses. Simply say, \u201cI\u2019m sorry, I didn\u2019t see that message. Would you mind re-sending it to me?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Commit to the \u201cinbox zero\u201d strategy.<\/strong> Your goal is to have your email inbox completely empty by the end of each day. To do this, you will need to learn four new email skills. Again, I explain these in detail in \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/michaelhyatt.com\/2008\/06\/yes-you-can-stay-on-top-of-email.html\" title=\"Post: \u201cYes, You Can Stay On Top of Email\u201d\">Yes, You Can Stay on Top of Email<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read this article and print it out for reference. Now turn your email back on and begin to practice what you have learned. The more you do it, the faster you will get. On average, I can process one hundred messages in thirty minutes.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Finally, like financial bankruptcy, you can\u2019t declare email bankruptcy very often. It is an emergency procedure for dire circumstances.<\/p>\n<p>The goal is not to evade your responsibilities but to wipe the slate clean, so that you can stay on top of your responsibilities going forward.<\/p>\n<div class=\"reminder\">Question: What does it feel like to start over with a clean slate?<\/div>\n<p>[uam_ad id=&#8221;46487&#8243;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You know it\u2019s time to declare email bankruptcy when you are experiencing the following four symptoms. If this is true of you, I provide a seven-step strategy for wiping the digital slate clean and starting over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":26018,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[827,90,503,163,30,1025],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Declare Email Bankruptcy and Get a Fresh Start<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Have you ever felt so overwhelmed by email that you wanted to just delete your email account and start over? In this post I provide a seven-step strategy for starting over.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fullfocus.co\/email-bankruptcy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Declare Email Bankruptcy and Get a Fresh Start\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Have you ever felt so overwhelmed by email that you wanted to just delete your email account and start over? 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