James O'Brien recently blogged about NOISE.
This blog post really struck a chord with me and got me thinking about my social media and online contacts and how they were (dis)organised. So over the past week I have been in evaluation mode, like James I need to reduce and manage the NOISE in my life.
To date I have tried to organise my email accounts having set up a new Gmail account this week. I now have four free email accounts and an account at my website host. There are three Gmail accounts and one Outlook account (an insurance policy in case Gmail is down/dies). I used to have just one Gmail account but since Google have made it possible for me to log into all of my accounts from my laptops and devices I think it is easier for me to have separate accounts.
My new Gmail account is for stuff I can do without - I have been very busy this week unsubscribing from lots of email lists and resubscribing from this new account to those I still want to follow. When I am on holidays or just too busy I can just ignore the messages that come through here. There will be less NOISE in my main mailbox.
My oldest Gmail account is to be my main account for personal correspondence etc. The problem is that I have been using this for years for family history things as well so it will take some time to move my family history correspondence and contacts over to my second Gmail account that I have printed on my business card. The emails that come in from people who contact me via my family website are presently forwarded to my personal Gmail account, I am will change this so they are forwarded to the account I will use for genealogy.
I am hoping that, by compartmentalising my email, I might be able to reduce some NOISE.
My next job is to follow James' lead and clean up my Twitter contacts so that Twitter becomes a useful tool once more.
This blog post really struck a chord with me and got me thinking about my social media and online contacts and how they were (dis)organised. So over the past week I have been in evaluation mode, like James I need to reduce and manage the NOISE in my life.
To date I have tried to organise my email accounts having set up a new Gmail account this week. I now have four free email accounts and an account at my website host. There are three Gmail accounts and one Outlook account (an insurance policy in case Gmail is down/dies). I used to have just one Gmail account but since Google have made it possible for me to log into all of my accounts from my laptops and devices I think it is easier for me to have separate accounts.
My new Gmail account is for stuff I can do without - I have been very busy this week unsubscribing from lots of email lists and resubscribing from this new account to those I still want to follow. When I am on holidays or just too busy I can just ignore the messages that come through here. There will be less NOISE in my main mailbox.
My oldest Gmail account is to be my main account for personal correspondence etc. The problem is that I have been using this for years for family history things as well so it will take some time to move my family history correspondence and contacts over to my second Gmail account that I have printed on my business card. The emails that come in from people who contact me via my family website are presently forwarded to my personal Gmail account, I am will change this so they are forwarded to the account I will use for genealogy.
I am hoping that, by compartmentalising my email, I might be able to reduce some NOISE.
My next job is to follow James' lead and clean up my Twitter contacts so that Twitter becomes a useful tool once more.
4 comments:
One thing I've been doing to reduce the "clutter" in my GMail mailbox, other than unsubscribing from services and mailing lists where I was deleting their e-mails immediately, is creating labels and filter rules to automatically move stuff out of my Inbox. By setting up additional synchronization rules on my mobile the clutter I have to deal with "immediately" has been reduced considerably.
Good point Ken. I use labels and think I need to declutter them as well!
Good advice Jill - I have been trying to do the same but it does take time. I find you also have to sit down first and think about what structure you want first then start moving and changing. The hard part is finding the time in the first place but definitely worth it.
Good advice Jill (and James). Particularly pertinent when travelling and emails may be using up precious download time and Mb. I need to go to my sign-up emails and see what I want to delete/change. After initially being negative I quite like Gmails new folder system and I'm using labels a lot.
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