You've got mail - oh wait, it's only newsletters

I’ve had the same email address since I started my business in 2001, and over the years I’ve signed up for this or that newsletter. I used to get excited when they’d pop into the inbox – interesting stuff to read or click on, useful information and tips.

Last week I realised that newsletters, be they daily, weekly or monthly, seem to make up more than 50% of the email I receive on a typical morning. I had got to the point where I selected them in bulk every morning and sent them to the trash can without even reading them. No excitement – just annoyance at turning the Mac on and seeing it load 48 new messages that had come in overnight, with half of them being from people trying to flog me stuff via their newsletters.

Really, it was giving me the most horrible start to the working day, knowing there were nearly 50 messages every morning, each one nagging “Read me, read ME!”. Some of them are work-related and client stuff and therefore a valid pull on my time and brainpower. The rest – heaven only knows why I subscribed in the first place and in some cases I doubt that I ever pushed the big red button, people had simply found me.

It was time to take action. Instead of simply trashing all of them I reviewed each one by one and opened the ones I never read even when I have the time and went through the unsubscribe process.

It’s going to take a few weeks to get the newsletter load down to those I may actually have time to read, as different newsletters come in on different cycles. But taking the time to unsub from some of them has felt like a little load shifting gently off my shoulders.

What about you? Are you suffering from a Read ME! overload as well?