Do you ever get overwhelmed by the amount of email newsletters piling up, awaiting your attention?

Yeah, me too.

Since the new year arrived, I’ve heard of many many many folks unsubscribing from newsletters, in an effort to lighten their email load, and give them some space to focus on getting productive work done.

Unsubscribing is definitely one really effective option.

I’d like to offer 4 alternative supportive systems to help you feel connected to your heart, the Divine, as well as your business, while also maintaining relationships with the newsletters where you’ve clearly receive value of one kind or another.

I don’t stay in email newsletter overwhelm…. no, I nip that in the bud.  Take a look!

System 1: My work email receives only work-email.

No personal stuff, no newsletters (even if they’re about business). This means that every email that comes to my ♾actualinfinity inbox is actually work related, and has a high likelihood of being important. So, when I say I have 30 emails to get to, that means 30 actual emails that need attention related to work. I know that everything else can wait till some other time. This keeps work email prioritized, front and center. and helps me avoid getting overwhelmed.

 

System 2: Use a non-email app that’s build for Newsletters and Content intake.

I have been using a new app called Stoop Inbox to subscribe to and receive ongoing email newsletter subscriptions. It works brilliantly.  Most of my newsletters get sent there, they don’t even get near my inbox. Stoop also makes it super easy to unsubscribe – they take care of it for you in one click. I use the free version, and there’s a $10/year (← Yes… that’s per year) version that gives you a bit more functionality, which I haven’t needed.

I have to admit… newsletters that are out of sight, are also out of mind, so I have to be intentional to remember to go visit Stoop and look through newsletters.  Worst case scenario, this makes me get really thoughtful about how much time I’m spending reading through stuff that is likely to be interesting and is rarely as useful as I might hope.

Take a look at System #2 here: Stoop Inbox.

 

System 3: Newsletters never land in any inbox.

Did you know that if you use gmail, you have infinite email addresses?  It’s true!  No matter which email address I’m using, I use gmails flexibility around email variants to make sure newsletters are not clogging up my in-box.

All you have to do is adjust your email address and add a filter so that all newsletters (or any mail that’s sent to that alternative email address) go into a special newsletters folder and completely skip the inbox.

With gmail, you can add anything to your address, after adding a + and prior to the @gmail.com.  For instance, if your normal email address is: regularemail@gmail.com and you wanted to implement this idea I’m sharing, you could subscribe to all newsletters with this email address: regularemail+news@gmail.com, or regularemail+tacos@gmail.com, or regularemail+unicorns@gmail.com.  You get the idea.

Then, in gmail, set up a filter for any messages sent to that +news email address to be filed directly into a label/folder, skipping the inbox. With all the newsletter riff-raff out of your hair, you can now focus on the most important email with a pure, clean focus.

Then, what I’ve found to be helpful is to intentionally schedule specific newsletter review time. Give yourself 1/2 hour to read through as much as you want.  Have a field day.  This has been especially effective for me because by the time I get to my folder of newsletters, it’s bursting full, and I have a nice selection to choose from.  I feel like I get to pick the absolute best articles from the batch, instead of trying to piecemeal a bunch of mediocre articles into something great.

And then… when you’re done with the time for catching up on newsletters,   you get to use this next point.  Ready?

 

System 4: Develop the courage to delete unread newsletters with abandon.

If you can’t read all you want to read in the time you have allotted for it, you need to either carve out more time to read newsletters, or learn to let the rest go.  If “carving out more time to read newsletters” sounds like how you want to spend your Friday night… more power to ya.  I, for one, would rather champion doing something creative, different, or nourishing – away from work.

We have limited time.  One of the most empowering things to do is to gather up a bunch of email newsletters and hit that delete button.  Watching them all disappear can be a real burden lifted.  All of a sudden, you have spaciousness and less clutter.  If you can’t get to them, let them go.

I’ve kept newsletters in my inbox before, because it was truly something I want/need to read. But you know what?  It gets stressful with it just sitting there. It never fails… I eventually gets to a point where I have to face the fact that the email is more in my way than it could ever provide me value. And so when I delete it… OMG… it’s the best feeling.

Side bonus…If you’re really sad about missing something, be assured, many folks who send out newsletters also publish that content on their blog.  So, you can always go out and read it there.

 

How would it feel for you for to have a supportive system in place to help you avoid overwhelm, while also having a system which has heart, so you don’t have to give it all up… you can just get it out of the way, till it’s the right time.  Ahhhhh….  systems with heart.  That’s how you get things done.

 

What do you think of these systems?  Are you going to try one or two?  I’d love to hear what you experience.

Please leave a comment below about what happens when you take one of these on, and/or if you have any other loving, supportive systems to help manage email newsletter overwhelm, let’s hear em!

 

In the meantime, I send lots of love, and hope that as your week carries on, you experience more love, not less – all-ways. ^SM ?