E-mail Derail - Feng Shui to the Rescue

I am very particular about my space----most of that is due to my background in Feng Shui studies but some of it is due to my mother’s training. Nevertheless, I am typically fastidious about things around our home. When life takes me on a temporary whirlwind, the stress for me increases because of the clutter that I’m faced with every day because of my schedule. I simply don’t have time to deal with it so when I see it, I become even more agitated.

One area that has become nearly crippling for me is the issue of emails. I get, on average, 30 to 40 a day. How can that be? I’m not a US Senator, I’m not running for office, I don’t have an on-line business. But truthfully, if I’m gone all day for whatever reason, when I return home I know that when I turn on my computer there will be an enormous amount that’s stacked up in my absence.

Of course, a lot of those emails I delete immediately as they hold no interest for me. If I can get my name off their email list, I’ll unsubscribe, but some of these sales pitches don’t allow me that option. Isn’t there a law about that? Nevertheless, I still face close to 20 emails daily which require some kind of action on my part. I struggle to keep my current email list below 100 at any one time. What is wrong with this picture, I ask myself ?

When I’m so adamant about my physical surroundings, I am understandably annoyed and befuddled by the computer clutter. For about five days this summer, my old computer crashed and I didn’t have one. My delight in being able to have a normal day without my nose in a laptop was lessened by the reality that, when I did get back on-line, I’d have more emails than I could bear. And that’s how it played out.

Sometimes I will take 2-3 hours on a day when I have some time and go through them one-by-one, with the idea that I’ll make a decision about a particular email, take action, move on to the next one, until I’ve gotten through them all. The issue always seems to be that the first ones I look at require a couple hours each of my time-----submit an article, send my curriculum vitae (needs updating), write a letter of recommendation, plan a course. These aren’t easy one-two requests.

I’ve decided that I’m going to enlist my Feng Shui expertise in finding a way to slow this influx of communication down to a more manageable flow. I’m not sure what this means, but I’m desperate. I’ve got a few ideas in mind and will experiment and let you know what worked and what didn’t. Since I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve received five additional emails (I would know this because my computer dings when a new one comes in). I know I’m not alone with this problem, so in the interest of all of us who struggle with computer infringement, I will begin my research now and let you all know. Oop---another computer ding.