Hopefully I’ve convinced you that you need to get to an empty inbox. But if you’re staring at a seemingly insurmountable mountain of messages… what can you do?
Okay, it’s time for a reality check here. You need to admit that you’re probably not going to get to those important messages buried somewhere in the pile. And if you do, it’s not going to be by accidentally seeing them in the list, but rather because you actually went looking for a specific message.
So, given that, what you’re going to do is take everything that is currently in your inbox, and move it into your new Archive folder. You can still search for messages in your archive, so it’s really no different from having them in your inbox, except you’ll now be able to easily see the new items that come into your inbox, and anything that is important enough to not archive it right away.
Some people struggle with this idea because it feels like you’re just cramming a bunch of unorganized stuff into a closet. The thing is, almost all modern email programs contain sophisticated search functionality that makes it easy to find a needle in the haystack. Your closet, on the other hand, does not. And even though you haven’t methodically organized this pile of messages, the truth is that you were never really going to anyway – you were just going to feel bad indefinitely about the fact that you hadn’t organized them.
By the way, this method of cleaning house works well for cluttered computer desktops or download folders too. Just burn a CD or DVD containing with everything that is sitting on your Desktop or in your Downloads folder, date the disc, and set it aside. I’m willing to bet you’ll never actually need it, but if you do it’s there.
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