One thing we’ve noticed about mothers worldwide is that they are simply overloaded with emails.
And it’s causing stress. Major stress that keeps mothers from fully enjoying their families. (Have you ever felt that way?)
So The Power of Moms has put together an “Emails to Zero” Challenge. Completing this challenge will take you about an hour, and it will you change your computer life.
The steps below will show you how to empty your email inbox and set up folders and filters so you can keep it empty tomorrow, the next day, and every day–no matter how busy your schedule becomes.
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This is amazing. I almost didn’t bother clicking over to read the suggestions because I just wasn’t sure it could possibly help me but because I have gotten such great advice from your site in the past I decided to check it out. My empty inbox looks B-E-A-utiful, thank you SO much!! There is something wonderful about everything having a place. My house is organized, why shouldn’t my emails be as well?!
I LOVE LOVE LOVE seeing the empty inbox message.
I can’t believe that it was that easy! Also, I feel really empowered to do some of my immediate action emails, because somehow just seeing the small list makes it all feel so doable. There were obviously the same amount of action emails before, but seeing them mixed in with all the other stack of info emails made the whole list seem impossible. I’m feeling pretty pleased right now. Thanks for the challenge and for the great walk through of how to do the plan!!
I have been wanting to do this for so long… thank you for giving me this incentive to finally make time to do it! With this one step done (what a relief!) I feel so empowered and ready to tackle the next items on my to-do list! THANK YOU!!
This is so amazing, I had literally thousands of emails clogging up my life and I never thought I’d see the light and had completely given up on trying to even stay on top of new emails. It’s amazing how much easier it is to get things done and to respond to emails in a timely manner when your inbox is empty. I can’t believe the mental clarity this simple exercise has given. Thank you so much for the challenge. Still sorting through the ‘to sort’ but at least I’ve regained some motivation to do it. Thank you again!
Lighter!
Awesome.
I feel relief.
Very satisfied. I’m ready to tackle other obstacles in my life. I can do it!
I feel amazing! Honestly my e-mail was one of the major things I always had hanging over my head. I was finding e-mails from over 3 years ago that I had ‘starred’ to respond to and never had due to not being able to prioritize when I sat down at the computer. Now when I have limited moments during the day when my toddler allows me to be on the computer I can get to the e-mails that are really important quickly!!
I feel empowered, I feel like I have control over something, a sense of relief. I feel motivated to do a similar project with the papers in my life (receipts, invoices, bills, newsletters, etc.).
FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you for the wonderful tips and advice!
I feel like when I look at my email now, it only takes about 5 minutes to figure out what to do with all of my email and then move on to more important things. Thank you!!!
It’s nice to have an empty inbox, though it took me longer than an hour to do it. Thanks for the challenge!
Phew! That was a lot of work to clean up. It makes me want to not let it get sloppy and full again! lol It also makes me realize the many many unnecessary emails I am getting and I started to unsubscribe to ones I don’t read or need.
Well, my inbox is to zero. I like the sparse-ness of it but I’m afraid it will be much easier for me to procrastinate doing some of the things in the action folder now that they’re ‘tucked away’ and not staring me in the face. I’ll give it a shot though and see what happens!
I keep a generally clean inbox. But, when life gets a little crazy, so does my inbox, and with a 6 week old, and 3 other children, and a husband who travels a lot, by inbox had been getting crazy a lot. And I didn’t have a good system of when to take care of emails. So, this challenge was perfect for me! I love the sorting system, and I managed to get my inbox totally cleared out. Feels so great. But most imporatantly, I feel like my system will now keep my inbox cleaned out without me spending too much time on the computer. So liberating! I can’t wait to keep it this way by quickly filing those messages away!
I feel a little frightened because I have not have my inbox empty in over a year. There were over 5000 messages in that box. Of course most of them were junk and some of them were bad news that I am sure will make me feel much better not seeing tomorrow when I open it up again.
I was sitting at my desk clearing out emails when this challenge popped up in my inbox. It was like manna from heaven! The inbox is white and clean and empty and it feels fabulous!
Frankly, I’m shocked. I got down to 990 but then just put the rest in a “to be sorted” file (which is fine, considering they were just sitting in the inbox). It feels really peaceful–and strange.
It really is the small and simple things that make more of a place in my mind and heart for the things–the people–who matter most!
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We know it sounds like heaven. And it is. Join us!
(1) Carve out one hour of your day for the “Emails to Zero” Challenge.
(2) Read through these email-emptying instructions.
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I changed the categories a little to suit my needs, like @Purchases to store all the many emails I get for things I’ve ordered online but haven’t received yet and @Info for emails I will need to refer to in the near future, but don’t need to actually do anything until the event comes up (the recipe I need tomorrow, concert ticket into, etc). I love having the @ in the front to pop those folders to the top of the list. Thanks for this challenge!
One website that has been really helpful in being able to get rid of emails is Ziplist. I get a ton of cooking and recipe emails, and this site lets you set up a recipe box that stores the links in a nifty manner just by “clipping it” with one click.
I also added a Reference Files folder and a Current Projects folder to keep my support material in . . . now it’s not cluttering up other folders or getting “lost”.
In the reference folder, I have a bunch of sub-folders (one for each child, one for my business receipts, one for happy mail that I just want to hang on to). I also learned how to sort emails in mail on my mac, something I’ve been meaning to do for ages.
My email system doesn’t support the @ sign, so I used 1, 2, etc. It feels great to be organized!
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(3) Implement what you’ve learned.
(4) Return to this page to fill out the form below and report on your success.
We want to hear about your experience! And if you love this challenge, you’ll also love our Mind Organization in Two Weeks program.
We’d love for you to share this challenge with your friends. The more who participate, the more happy mothers the world will have!