Email Bankruptcy

Web Worker Daily and Lifehacker have both had articles recently dealing with the concept of “Email Bankruptcy”, which means pretty much what you are guessing it means: Deleting all of your email in an attempt to start anew.

I really like the concept, and realize that I actually declared myself email bankrupt in my recent move to Gmail, as described in a comment I posted at Web Worker Daily:

I just declared “email bankruptcy”, in a way, by switching over to Gmail and not bothering to import any of my old email from Outlook. And it worked wonders!

My Outlook was so bloated full of emails that it took nearly two minutes to load and check for new messages (though to be fair, I think I can attribute some of this to Outlook just not handling a large volume of email all that well - even when it’s archived.

Those problems, coupled with the fact that I was tired of trying to make SMTP work as my means of accessing email anywhere, AND that I discovered an easy way to access GMail on my Verizon phone, convinced me to make the switch. Oh, and the fact that I could actually access my own domain’s email via GMail (though the whole “Sent by” field that appears in emails I send isn’t all that great).

Anyway, this forced bankruptcy has really helped me refocus how I approach email. Instead of treating my inbox as storage, I’m using it as an actual inbox of items which need addressing. Not only does this make me more organized, but I’ve also found it helps a lot with making sure I take care of tasks that need taking care of.

However, should I ever need it, I do have Outlook still installed with all my old email. Though in the past few weeks, I’m surprised that I haven’t had to load it up more than once to look up an email. My advice is give email bankruptcy a try if you are feeling overwhelmed, but make sure you have a backup!