8 years ago
1
Clutter
Somewhere in the world, there must be people who actually take a moment to unsubscribe from all those e-mails—newsletters and sale alerts and publicity blasts—that clutter their inboxes. Rather, I mean, than simply deleting them every single day. One doesn’t like to calculate the time costs of these things; it’s too depressing.
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I'm one of those people who diligently unsubscribe from any unsolicited mailing. The Gmail spam filter catches 99% of the unsolicited bullshit, but once in a while there's an email from some company you may or may not have interacted with in the past. I just check the bottom of the email and hit unsubscribe.
The surprising thing is, it really works. I rarely ever get follow-up emails if I do this. I had to add one or two senders to my spam filter over the years, but that's it.
I call those emails "ham." They're not outright scammy spam, but they're not exactly nutritious either.
Thing is, unsubscribing really doesn't take more than a second or two, and it's oddly satisfying. It means my inbox is useful, for the most part. I also make sure to archive emails I'm done with and keep notes and tasks separate from my inbox, so I rarely have more than five emails in my inbox at one time.
Digital clutter is a real thing, but good "hygiene" habits can easily overcome it.