Breaking Through the Digital Clutter
Practical and philosophical tips for inbox overload
The team I work with at the university has found ourselves talking quite a bit recently about how to best communicate with students. How to get information out about events, deadlines, or interesting opportunities and have it actually be seen and paid attention to without feeling like we are screaming into the void.
Email seems so saturated. Does anyone even see our social media posts due to always-in-flux algorithms? Would it work to start some sort of channel on Slack or Discord? Put ads on those TV screens around campus? Maybe use carrier pigeons? Or better yet, an adorable new service— message delivery by campus squirrels . . .
Somewhere in the middle of one of these discussions I ran across this, from a colleague who works in the library:
And immediately I thought about my own inbox— specifically my non-work related one. The one that at the time had crested well more than 100 unread messages. Many of which at some point I would likely delete without reading. Not because I’m not interested in the latest release from an author I love or the policies on the docket at city council affecting my neighborhood. I’m even truly curious about the sale at Oiselle and the new nut butter Picky Bars (yum!). I signed up to get updates about all these things because I am genuinely very interested in all of them.
But I am also genuinely overloaded.
It’s simply too much.
Not just for students.
For people.
Which was the realization that my colleague’s tweet spurred for me. When I think about why I ignore my personal inbox, it has nothing to do with disinterest. Instead it’s overwhelm at the sheer volume of information. In a world where a large part of the work many of us do involves responding to emails, it can be hard to spend additional time sorting through a second inbox on our downtime. I would imagine students may feel the same way about messages that aren’t directly related to coursework, a job, or an organization they are very actively involved in. It’s not that they don’t see the value in that workshop or networking event, it’s just that it’s one of 300 things vying for their time.
And that’s just the email. What about all the other ways information is shared digitally: social media; chat services through Google or Teams, Slack or Discord; notifications in productivity tools like Notion or Asana. Probably other things that aren’t even on my radar.
It’s simply too much.
Not just for students.
For people.
So what can be done about it? How can we push back against the continual flow of information. Is it possible to have a more peaceful relationship with our inboxes? To not click them open with one eye squinted shut as if the count of new messages is going to rival a gory horror movie scene?
I’m not sure, honestly. But here are some things I’m trying:
Labels One of my biggest problems in my personal inbox is that there are all these things I intentionally save to read later (articles, newsletters) or attend to at a specific time (bills) and I was leaving them unread as a reminder. This just made the overall number of messages creep up and up and up. Recently I started using the “labels” in Gmail to tag these things as “TBR” (to be read) and “Bills/Reminders”. I can then mark them as unread, but they stay easily identifiable in my inbox. Gmail even has a feature that allows you to segment your inbox by labels so each of these now live in specific sections:
This seems to be taking some of the overwhelm out for me. I use a similar system at work, as well (big shoutout to my colleague Cait who introduced me to this). I will note, that I use Gmail personally and at work- so I’m not familiar with other email clients, but hopefully something similar exists. I’ll also note that I am mostly accessing email in a browser to do this organizational work, so I’m not super clear on how it might work in an app. I use the native iPhone app for my personal email and the Gmail app for my work email (for work/non-work separation reasons) but am mostly just using the apps for reading and deleting messages.
Unsubscribe The holiday season is a great time to unsubscribe to those email lists you got on that one time you bought someone a gift from that place you never shopped at again. It’s so easy to just delete the message, but I’ve been trying to take the extra time to click through and unsubscribe, reminding myself that this will give future me less incoming messages to sort through on a daily basis.
Subtraction The two tips above are super tangible: make labels, click the unsubscribe link. This one is isn’t that. It’s not a button you can click or a form you can fill out, but my hunch is, it’s probably the actual way through the overload. And also the hardest to do.
I read an interesting interview from
with clinical psychologist and professor Yael Schonbrun recently. While it was primarily an article on parenting, the discussion about subtraction really resonated with meQ: [I]n your book, you talk about the idea of subtracting — the idea that we can be thoughtful and strategic in learning how to do less. And it's not easy. And sometimes we don't have those choices. But I think a lot of times we do have the choice, and we just may not realize it. I struggle with this in practice — I tend to think I'm just gonna do all the things and it'll be fine.
A: What the science shows us in terms of the cognitive piece is that we have a hard time doing the action of subtracting, and it's because it often doesn't occur to us. We engage in what's called subtraction neglect. We don't even think about it. What's more, when we are overwhelmed, that tendency to neglect subtraction grows stronger. So the busier you are, the less likely you are to take something off your plate, which is really unfortunate.
The interview goes on to talk about the importance of being deliberate in thinking about what you value and how things that you are doing do or don’t support those values. I love these clarifying questions from Schonbrun:
How much does this matter in terms of how I want to look back on this phase of life? What are activities that feel really important that I really want to stand for, and what activities matter a lot less to me?
She goes on to talk about putting some of the things that matter a lot less on a “stop doing list” (as opposed to a to do list). When I think about this as it applies to the never-ending influx of email dilemma, I think it can be applied in two ways. One, as an organizing principle for those unsubscribes and things I’m tagging to read later (is that article really about something I value, or does it just seem like something I should be reading). And two, as a reason to give myself grace for just stepping away from the inbox entirely sometimes; acknowledging that maybe I won’t care what my inbox count was at when I look back on this phase of my life
And there it is— perhaps the fact that people aren’t reading email isn’t a problem to be solved at all.
Maybe we’re making a choice to step away and prioritize something else. Perhaps this isn’t forever but is for a time. Perhaps it’s heeding the call for more in-person/offline relationships. Or the need to disconnect to hear our own thoughts. And sure, it’s good to know there are tips and tricks to make it more manageable when we must step back in— but perhaps the real trick is to give ourselves the permission to step away.
To subtract that which is not valuable.
Beautiful Thing of the Week
Just a tiny lovely thing from my world this week (last week’s longer list, including a special birthday squirrel is here!)
🐈⬛ One of the baristas at my local coffee shop was sketching these tiny cats on the cardboard cup sleeves on Saturday morning. Made my day!
Would love to hear your thoughts on stepping away from the constant influx of information. Is it just a pie in the sky dream or something actually do-able? Do you have any favorite tips and tricks for managing your inbox.
Be well and find tiny joy,
Mary Chris
PS- there’s some great information here about doing a very comprehensive digital declutter (on way more than just your inbox)— if that feels of interest to you!
Excellent post. As you pointed out, you can't actively "not do." That's like trying not to think about a pink elephant! A simple change in perspective works well for me. I flip it around and think about "staying on mission" which is something I can actively do. Emails are other distractions are thorns, brambles, and dense thickets on my path. A good woodsman goes over, under, or around such things rather than through them. Why waste valuable energy hacking away at the underbrush -- energy that could be spent on mission-critical tasks?