When Should You Declare Bankruptcy? (On Your Email!)
When to declare bankruptcy.
If you have 525,600 emails in your inbox, you may feel hopeless. Maybe a nuke and pave is your best option.
If someone is hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and they have no way of paying it off, sometimes bankruptcy is the only way.
Let’s be clear: Email bankruptcy is not even close to the seriousness of actual bankruptcy. For most people, deleting all emails and starting over is not the end of the world.
Sure, Aunt Edith might bring up the fact that she emailed you a cat video last summer, and you never responded. If an email’s been around for more than a month, it’s probably not helpful.
For some, hitting delete and starting over is not only the best solution, but if sets you free from the past (and email bankruptcy affects nothing. Your credit score is intact. You just might have lost some clout from Aunt Edith.)
For others — hitting delete on moths, or sometimes, years of email can be as scary as bungee jumping from the Burj Khalifa. If that’s you, here are some less scary options:
Pay for SaneBox
Seriously. I know some people don’t want to spend money on apps. But this one is worth spending a little something on. What will happen when you set this up will astound you. My guess is that at least half (probably more!) of your 525,600 emails will get moved to your later or news folders. With a bit of training, the basic Sanebox set up will put only the email you care about in your inbox. It’s a serious electronic mail lifesaver. (Use this link for signing up and you get $5 off, which is basically a free month, and I do too.)
Let your old address go to seed
If you've still got a dinosaur email from Yahoo, Hotmail, or AOL (anybody still got a Juno or MindSpring account?), this one's for you. Right now, Gmail's the best free email around. While, I’m not a huge Google fan, Gmail has some basic features I talk about in this book (including the ability to “snooze”, automated “newsletter” folders — and has excellent archive and search functions.) and it costs you nothing. Set up a Gmail account that is as close to your name as you can get and begin using that as your main personal point of contact. You can keep your old address, but slowly stop checking it. Use that address for a signup address to keep unwanted spam out of your new one. (Gmail is pretty good at detecting spam. In fact, sometimes it’s too good. Be sure to check your spam folder frequently in the beginning, as I’ve found it to be sometimes a little aggressive.).
Letting an old address “go to seed” is sometimes a better way to get out of email debt without going full on nuclear and blowing up the whole thing.
Search and Destroy
The search function with most email clients is fantastically fast now. Don't want to go too wild with deleting? Check out your inbox and find the biggest offenders and delete those. If Billy Bob Appliances from three towns over keeps sending you three emails a day about their never-ending fire sale, do a search and destroy. Type “Billy Bob” in your browser, select all, and delete. This takes some time if you t have a lot, but can provide some precision before eliminating everything.
Be a Liberal Archiver
If “delete” is still freaking you out, remember you can archive everything. Archive your whole inbox. It’s fine. Do it now.
You’re losing nothing. Everything is still searchable. It’s all there. If you have a limited storage capacity, this might not be the best solution for you, as you may eventually run out of space. But email storage is cheap and this might be a suitable solution for anyone with email FOMO (fear of missing out).
Declare Bankruptcy
You may be done.
Out of storage.
Out of patience.
Out of caring anymore.
At that point of frustration, email bankruptcy may be your best option. Elect all and delete. If you need to do so, empty your trash and start fresh. You might need to let a few people know that their old email is gone. Please send again. But most will be no worse off.
If you decide this is your best option, like financial bankruptcy, you want to put systems into place to prevent yourself from over going there again. I use the strategy and tactics of the Growability® Inbox method. It works.
My inbox is empty nearly every day.
Let me know if you’re interested. I would love to coach you through it.
It’s possible.
You can do this.
You are doing better than you think.
You have more potential than you know.
Book Bonus
I am currently in the middle of three books, some of you might find of interest:
Wool by Hugh Howey: This is a gripping story. Well written. Fast-paced. I picked this up because I thought the trailer for the upcoming AppleTV series looks great. But I usually like to read before I watch.
The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick: I read an article this week about AI being the sunset of the Information Age and the beginning of the Intelligence Age. History will determine this sometime in the future. Gleick’s work is really a masterpiece, in that it’s a well-researched history of information. Which one would think to be a snoozer. But I am finding it both entertaining and fascinating.
The 1-Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dib: Sure. It’s basically how to build simple a sales funnel. But the “simple” part is good. I like things that have been distilled (and that’s more than just a good bourbon). That said, if want the most straightforward way for building a sales funnel that integrates with the rest of your business/nonprofit, I think you need Growability®. :-)