Happy exercise, no. 4: Inbox freedom

All Happy ExercisesTM should be performed only after adequate consultation with your legal, medical, spiritual, and other advisors

By the end of the week, cut the number of messages in your email inbox by half. Halve the number again by the end of next week and so on until you can finish a day with no messages in your inbox.

I tend to agree with others that two pernicious sources of stress in our lives are tasks left unfinished and unartistic clutter. A full inbox generally represents too much of both and is a drag on our moods and our energies. It's a burden to which we've become so familiar that we rarely notice it anymore.

Group emails you're saving for some reason into folders--jokes, passwords, invoices, etc. If you intend to reply to an email, take the few minutes necessary and do it. If an email contains an important reminder to do something, move it to your calendar. If an email contains a task which needs completed, complete the task or move it to a to-do list. If it contains an important attachment, save the attachment to your computer in an appropriate folder.

Any decent email software includes spam filters. Take the time to learn how to operate these and use them--they will save you hours and likely will help protect your computer from viruses, worms, and related ilk.

You'll find it's much less depressing and intimidating to open your mail program and be confronted with one day's email as opposed to the past 8 months. It's freeing. It's happy. It's good times.