As a coach, I get busy this time of year leading people toward organization, clarifying goals, and setting intentions. But I have to admit, I have had one big dirty secret lingering in my closet for seven years now. Yup, seven years of something that, up to this point, has been sucking energy from me every single day.
My email.
I recently saw a Facebook post of a friend fessing up to having thousands of unanswered emails. The post was somewhat unapologetic and comical, suggesting there were two kinds of people in the world: those that read their emails and kept their inbox to a reasonable number and those that let the whole thing go off the rails. He was of the latter group. I laughed guiltily. My sister gasps every time she steals a glance at my home screen and demands with exasperation how it is that I have over 25,000 unread emails loitering my inbox??? I admit, it feels a little lazy. What are those emails, anyway? Are there important messages I haven’t gotten back to? My once muted shame over letting my emails slide piqued and two options flashed through my mind: drop this email address like it never existed and start fresh . . . or begin cleaning it up. Stat.
Weighing my options, I recalled the smattering of client emails that had somehow made their way to my personal inbox and needed to find their proper home in my professional account. The thought of deleting important information made me physically tense, so I put that in the “clean it up” category.
