Getting Unrolled – Let the Robots Filter Your Email

Getting Unrolled
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    I finally did something last week that I tell all of my clients to do. I used unroll.me to automatically manage all my email subscriptions. And nope, I don’t think that makes me a hypocrite.

    The first question you might be asking is: Well, why do you tell other people to do that if you hadn’t?

    Valid question. The primary reason is that email subscriptions weren’t a problem in my inbox. They tend to be one of the biggest problems in most inboxes. That’s why I tell others to use unroll.me.

    For years, I had been creating a filter each time I got a new email from a subscription. Those emails never hit my inbox, they went straight to the “Distraction” folder. My system was to check that folder once a week and review the contents.

    I don’t tell my clients to follow my process because it requires sustained discipline to keep the unimportant stuff out of the inbox. A service like unroll.me does it automatically. Might as well let the robots do it. And while I did keep up the creation of the filters, I wasn’t keeping up in other ways.

    Why Change Systems Now?

    As with anything, systems and processes that once worked well can start to fail as other factors change over time. I realized this year that my system was no longer working. How did I know? Because every month there would be over 500 emails in my “Distraction” folder that I hadn’t dealt with. Exactly 566 as of Friday if you must know.

    I had arrived at the point in my personal workflow that I no longer was willing to devote my attention to dealing with the amount of subscription emails I was receiving. Time for a change.

    Getting Unrolled

    It is amazing what can happen when you stop paying attention. Turns out I had 244 email subscriptions. Oye! No wonder my Distraction folder was overflowing.

    Using unroll.me, I unsubscribed from 55 email lists and “rolled up” another 161 subscriptions into the daily digest in under 15 minutes. Honestly, it took me at least that long to delete the 300+ filters I had set up in Gmail to deal with those email subscriptions.

    unroll.me stats after I was done

    My unroll.me stats after I was done

    Quick, easy and now there’s just 1 email a day that ends up in Distraction. That’s right, it still doesn’t get to hit my inbox. The Inbox is a sacred place and must be treated as such. However, I can now quickly process through a single email with all my email subscriptions and quickly get removed from lists that are no longer relevant.

    Now What?

    The only cleanup item remaining is to delete the 566 other emails from the Distraction folder. I’ve found that I’m typically looking at my Rollup Digest daily, but that may go to every other day. Looking back, I do wish I’d taken 30 minutes about 5 months ago to start using unroll.me. But, better late than never. And all the better to share the lesson with you.

    How are you dealing with 2nd tier email in your inbox (you know, the stuff you like to get, but isn’t important to the day-to-day operation of your business)? I’d love to hear about your process in the comments.

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