It’s a new year, the time when many of us consider our plans for the year.

If you’re anything like me, plans are often about the new things we want to do. The problem is we all have the same 168 hours in the week, and they’re already full. So where do we fit the new plans?

Saying yes to something new means saying no to something else, often something we’re already doing. It might mean saying no to several somethings.

One of the things I want to say no to in 2020 is clutter, both physical and digital.

I am a firm believer that clutter affects our mental wellbeing.

Well, it affects mine. I find it difficult to relax in a cluttered space. It’s not necessarily that I want to get up and clean that space. It’s more that I know it needs to be done, and that makes it harder to relax … or to get on with what needs doing.

I have trained myself to not be bothered if I can’t see the clutter (e.g. my son’s bedroom), or if it’s not my clutter (e.g. in someone else’s house). But it does bug me if it’s in “my” space, and I could do something about it. I think that’s why I like going to a cafe to write—if the clutter is out of sight, it’s out of mind. Then I can write.

But physical clutter is only half the battle. The other half is electronic.

That’s both easier and harder to ignore. Easier, because one tiny icon on a smartphone screen hides hundreds of unread emails or unread blog posts or podcasts we’ve been meaning to listen to. It’s easy to ignore that little icon (especially if you’ve turned notifications off—which I do recommend).

But it’s also harder, because it’s all too easy to let one unread email become one hundred … or one thousand. And the common advice of deleting the email app (or social media apps) from your phone doesn’t necessarily solve the problem. The email and text messages and Facebook messages are still there, even though we can’t see them. Just like the clutter in the junk cupboard.

I’ll leave you to Marie Kondo when it comes to physical declutter (and I give you full permission to ignore her 30-book rule).

I’m going to focus on decluttering your electronic life:

• Declutter your blog notifications.
• Declutter your email subscriptions.
• Clear your email inbox.
• Keep your inbox clear.

I’ve recently heard that we spend an averages of 720 hours a year on email. That’s two hours a day! It doesn’t take a maths whiz to work out that decluttering your email will save serious time—time that could be spent on a more productive pursuit, like finishing your current manuscript, or writing your next.

Four Tips for decluttering your electronic life: declutter your blog notifications, declutter your email subscriptions, clear your email inbox, and keep your inbox clear. #WritersLife #Declutter Share on X

Declutter Your Blog Notifications

Most websites and blogs give you the option to follow them by email subscription. Sometimes you can even read the entire post via your email app, without even visiting the blog.

This is a great idea, but if you follow a lot of blogs—especially prolific blogs—you’ll soon find your email inbox overrun with emails about blog posts you haven’t read. There are two issues with blog notifications:

1. They clutter up your inbox.
2. You run the risk of missing an important email because your email inbox is full of clutter.

There are two simple and logical solutions to this problem:

1. Review and delete email notifications as you receive them (at least daily).
2. Don’t follow so many blogs by email.

Yes, I can hear you. You’re following these blogs because you want to see (and perhaps read) their posts.

But there is another way: an RSS feed reader.

RSS is Really Simple Syndication, and it’s the way those blogs deliver you an email about each blog post.

I use a the free version of Feedly. I can use it on my phone or PC, which means my reading is synced between devices. This means I can browse Feedly while I’m waiting in line at the supermarket, or read it at home during the day or in the evening on my tablet or PC.

I recommend using Feedly to keep track of those blogs you browse, read, or share. I follow very few blogs via email. I follow my own blogs (to make sure the posts go live and that the RSS feed is working). I follow (maybe) three other blogs via email. I realised most blogs either sent the same information via email as they posted on their blog, or they sent a link to the blog post. So I unsubscribed and followed the blogs through Feedly instead.

If you plan to comment on blogs (e.g. because you’re part of a regular meme or blog hop), then I recommend using the WordPress reader app. It makes it easy to view, approve, and respond to comments on your own blog, and to follow, like posts, and comment on other blogs.

Action Tips:

• Sign up for Feedly (or another RSS reader).
• Install the WordPress reader app your smartphone.
• Unsubscribe from those inbox-cluttering emails.
• Add any subscriptions you want to keep to Feedly or WordPress.

If you already follow blogs through Feedly and have a habit of clicking “Read Later”, take some time to go through your Read Later tab. Read the posts, or delete them. I’ve just done this, and found I had unread posts from two years ago. I suspect I deleted over 1,000 unread posts.

My new resolution is to keep that Read Later list to under ten posts.

Declutter Your Email Subscriptions

I don’t know about you, but I seem to end up on a lot of email lists:

• Some are lists I need to be on (e.g. power bills and information about when my tax payments are due).
• Some are from retail sites where I’ve signed up to their loyalty programme (because that saves me money).
• Some are notifications about products or training courses I’ve bought online.
• A lot are random—I remember signing up, but I can’t always remember why. And I certainly don’t read the emails.

Again, there are two issues with email subscriptions:

1. They clutter up your inbox.
2. You run the risk of missing an important email because your email inbox is full of clutter.

So the objective is twofold:

1. Reduce the number of emails in your inbox (ideally to zero).
2. Reduce the number of emails you receive overall.

Reducing the number of emails you receive will automatically reduce the number in your inbox (obviously!). But how?

Set up a new email address e.g. a free gmail address.

That might not make sense at first, but I promise there is a logic to it. The point is to divide important personal emails (the ones that could affect your family relationships or credit rating) from the unimportant (pretty much everything else).

It means you’re less likely to miss an important email (as that stays in your main email account), and that’s a stress-saver itself. It also means you can easily review and delete the emails in this inbox, as most of them won’t require any action from you.

Use this new address for:

• Retail sites (especially the ones that send you the daily sales emails).
• Training courses.
• Online product subscriptions.

Whenever you receive a subscription email in your main email inbox, decide:

• Is this a personal email i.e. not from a mailing list? If so, it can stay in your main email box.
• Is this from an important business e.g. the tax department? If so, it can stay in your main email box.
• Do you know this person, product, or service? If not, unsubscribe.
• Do you still want to hear from this person, product, or service? If so, update your email address to your new address.

You should be able to update your information by clicking a link at the bottom of the email. If your only option is to unsubscribe, do that, then resubscribe with your new address.

This will take a few weeks (or longer, depending on how many email lists you’re on, and how often they contact you). But it will only take a few seconds per email to change your details, and that will help keep your main inbox clear.

Clear Your Email Inbox

But how do you clear your email inbox and reach the magical (and possibly mythical) inbox zero?

Use Folders

All email programmes allow you to set up folders. You can then file the mails you’ve read and want to keep so you can access them again, but they’re not cluttering up your inbox.

What folders do you need? That will depend on you, how many email addresses you have, and what you use them for (e.g. you’ll have different folders on your work email than your personal email).

I recently listened to an episode of The Content Fix podcast which suggested using no more than three email folders. The logic was that only having three folders makes it easy to assign each email you want to keep to a folder.

If you want to start with inbox zero from today, create a “Old Emails” folder, and move all the emails your current inbox into that new folder. That way, you won’t lose anything but can still access old emails if necessary.

Check Out Unroll.me

But what about all those email newsletters you kind of want to receive, but still don’t want to clog up your inbox?

Check out unroll.me. It’s a free Gmail application that shows you what email lists you’re subscribed to, and gives you three options:

• Keep in inbox
• Roll up
• Unsubscribe

You will then receive a daily email from Unroll.me with the introduction to all your subscribed emails, and the option to click through and read the full email. Yes, it takes longer to read the full email than if you received it directly. But I find this slight inconvenience is made up for by the fact I only have to skim through and delete one email, not twenty. If you do find yourself always wanting to read a specific email, simply go into Unroll.me, and move that subscription back into your inbox.

Bonus tip:

If you already use Unroll.me or a similar service, take a few minutes to go through your subscription list and unsubscribe from any newsletter that you can’t remember subscribing to, or no longer read. Businesses have to pay to have you on their email list, so you’re doing them a favour by unsubscribing.

Check out Boomerang

If you email through Gmail, then sign up for a free Boomerang account. Boomerang is an email management app that helps you get to the magical inbox zero by taking emails out of your inbox and returning them on a set day.

For example, if I’ve agreed to review a book, I’ll let the author know when the review is due to go live, then Boomerang the email to come back on that day. The returning email prompts me to check the blog post has gone live, and email the link to the author.

I also use Boomerang for managing my to-do list e.g. by returning the emails relating to an editing job a couple of days before I’m due to start work, or by emailing me the link to a training course, so I can work through some of the (many) training courses I’ve signed up for.

This means I can keep my email inbox empty enough that everything fits on one screen.

This makes it easier to see everything and helps ensure I don’t lose track of important emails or emails that require an answer.

There are free and paid versions of Boomerang.

The free version allows you to Boomerang ten emails per calendar month. The paid version allows for unlimited emails. I use the free version on my personal Gmail account, and the paid version for my editing account (as I kept running up against the ten emails per month limit).

Check out these apps that help you keep your inbox clear: Feedly, Unroll.me, and Boomerang for Gmail #WritersLife #DigitalDeclutter Share on X

The result will be an email inbox that only contains emails relevant to what you need to do today (or this week). I can promise that decluttering your inbox will reduce your email stress.

Action Tips:

• Set up a dedicated email address for bookish subscriptions.
• Redirect subscriptions for retail sites, training courses, and online subscriptions to your new address.
• Unsubscribe from anything you’re not genuinely interested in.
• Sign up for Unroll.me and add so-so emails to your daily rollup.
• Sign up for Boomerang and use it to keep your inbox at zero.

Keep Your Inbox Empty

The trick to making this work is keeping on top of your email. Get it down to zero, and set yourself a target of getting back to zero at least once a week. This will mean developing a system for managing your email and setting aside time to respond to emails, but the effort is worth it.

Joanna Penn recently interviewed behavioral psychology expert Nir Eyal, who pointed out one of the reasons email is such a timesuck:

The time wasted on e-mail is wasted not on the checking, not on the replying, but on the re-checking.

What does this look like? In my case, I would open an e-mail, read it real quick, put it away, open it again, put it away, open it again, put it away. We forget what’s in the e-mail, so we touch each e-mail way too many times.

I’ve read before that we should only check our email when we have time to deal with it. That reflects Nir Eyal’s point: it’s not the checking that takes time. It’s the rechecking. So our aim should be to reduce the number of times we recheck an email by either:

• Dealing with an email message the first time we read it, or
• Moving the email out of our inbox (e.g. by moving it to a folder or by using an app like Boomerang) until we are ready to action it.

We then need to make time to action those emails. Eyal says he sets aside time every Monday afternoon to respond to the second category of emails. What he finds is that by then, a lot of the problems and requests have already been sorted out.

This is similar to the 4D method of managing email:

• Delete: If you don’t need to keep it, delete it.
• Do it: If it can be actioned in two minutes or less, do it now.
• Delegate: If someone else can do it, delegate it (harder for authorpreneurs and other self-employed people).
• Defer: If it can’t be actioned in less than two minutes, defer it.

The challenge is then to make time to deal with those deferred emails, whether that’s once a day or once a week. And that’s my challenge for 2020!

Do you have any digital declutter or email management tips to share?