Your Mental Health: Clear your inbox. Trust Me.

In today's edition, let's discuss digital overwhelm and it's impact on your health.

As one of my clients recently stated, “one of the more cathartic self-care practices I’ve recently undertaken is mass-unsubscribing.”

Good morning!

What was the first thing you did upon waking up this morning? Did you run to the restroom? Make breakfast? Snooze your alarm? Make your bed? Hop in the shower? Brush your teeth? I must have left out an option because I don’t feel like I’ve hit everything…

Chances are you checked your phone. And scrolled. And maybe you caught up with some texts. Some emails and some direct messages. Let’s be real: the impetus to check our phones immediately and get pulled into the day’s demands is not lost upon any of us, especially if you’re an industrious person for whom multiple people’s business operations run through.

Part of this is just where we are in the digital age. I wouldn’t be giving practical advice if I told you not to do this. Texting people matters. For many people, social media is essential to stay connected. Deleting apps isn’t always the best answer, easy as it may seem (it’s only just a re-download away anyway, right?).

But one way to quell the silent screams of notifications and digital overwhelm and the anxiety that comes with it is to look at your messages — your e-mail inbox (or inboxes), mainly — and undertake the highly arduous but underrated task that you probably have told yourself you’ll get around to.

Scroll down. Read the Fine Print. Unsubscribe.

Clear your inbox. Delete those promotional messages from that Christmas gift that you just bought. Detox your inbox from two or three of those self-help newsletters you subscribed to earlier this month (that you never read) because you wanted to ground yourself this new year. Wait a minute…except for this one. Keep this one.

Just do your eyeballs a solid and scan through all the bullshit e-mails that don’t serve you. Not only will it save you the hassle of combing through the unimportant unreads to find the unreads that matter, but you also won’t have to be one of those chronic under-readers who let their inbox bleed into the thousands.

Kenny Mach @kenny_mach

Oh my days what happens when you hit 100,000 unread emails? I feel like it should unlock some magical powers or something.

What’s worse: much of your inbox overflow might not even be your fault. A 2021 report from The Manifest found that 23% of e-mail unsubscribes happen because the subscriber never subscribed. I’m looking at you, ActBlue.

The best way to clean your inbox is to get on your laptop, open your mailing system, and be ready for the endless tabs that come with unsubscribing. Whether it’s on your personal or work e-mail, the Cleveland Clinic explains why e-mail inbox anxiety differs from social media anxiety.

“It adds to the list of things that you have to be responsible for,” says Dr. Kia-Rai M. Prewitt. “For people who prefer text messages or social media, email represents one more way they have to communicate — and it might not be their preferred method of communication.”

Once More, For Emphasis: Clean Your Inbox.

This newsletter doesn’t follow the typical structure — normally, I’d identify a problem and wait til the end to give you a solution. But here I’ve given you the problem and solution right away, and I just want to use the rest of this article to reinforce why cleaning your inbox is so important.

Another benefit of cleaning out your inbox is better awareness about future subscriptions and where you list your e-mail. Since my recent e-mail purge, I’m extra hesitant about where I sign my email at in-person events, always leaving the “include me on promotional e-mails” box blank at checkout of online purchases and vigilant about where else my information is available.