Not only in the household many things accumulate over time. Even digital life is not spared.
Every day I look at my smartphone several times because a new mail has arrived. I have noticed for quite some time that not much of it is really relevant. Unfortunately, I’ve put it off far too long to take care of it.
![](https://konkludenz.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Bildschirmfoto-2018-10-15-um-21.59.16-1.jpg)
I now want to deal with this issue in two steps. In the first step the mass of incoming mails should be reduced. In the second step I want to look for a new principle how to handle my mailbox.
Let’s start with the reduction of mails. I have several types of mails:
60% notifications. The typical activity notification when something changes in one of my web services e.g:
- Person XY has posted something in a group
- Your monthly update from…
- Shipping notifications
30% Newsletter. Newsletter from forgotten opt-outs, which you are happy to enter during the registration process 😉
9% Mails from friends and family. The only mails you want to receive
<1% Spam. Fortunately, there is hardly any spam mail getting through.
To unsubscribe from the newsletters is not a big effort and only takes some time. The unsubscribe link at the end of a newsletter is quickly found and clicked. Subsequently I selected and deleted all mails of the respective sender via the search function. So I unsubscribed bit by bit from all newsletters of the last years.
![](https://konkludenz.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Bildschirmfoto-2018-10-15-um-17.05.08.png)
The thing with the notifications is not so easy. You have to login to the respective service and make the desired settings deeply hidden in the settings. This is where I spent most of my time to get the flood of mails under control. Also here was the procedure: Unsubscribe and delete all accumulated mails. So I adjusted the notification settings of pretty much all services individually or unsubscribed from the service completely.
![](https://konkludenz.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Bildschirmfoto-2018-10-15-um-17.05.55.png)
This way is very time-consuming but in any case sustainable. There are only very few mails arriving at the moment.
Of the former 26´000 mails there are now only about 200 left in my mailbox, which are important for me in some way. But I don’t have a real archiving concept for this yet.