Ask HN: How can I stop my inbox/wishlist/bookmarks/tabs/todos from growing?
my work inbox is by nature of my job is some sort of email hydra; if I take out one thread, 10 more appear. This is kind of a blessing&#x2F;curse of always-on communication and instant connections in that you can drown yourself in them, and in fact, some like it that way. Edit: Forgot to write how I handle this -- for actual emails I need to check, just careful filters (with a backup of the filters) helps me and I can more rapidly figure out which folders need attention when they have badges, which can sit, and which is the &quot;quick check&quot; (general inbox). The benefit for me is I can shift context a lot better -- items in my Team&#x27;s DL folder I pay high attention to, general reports I relegate to &quot;when I have time&#x2F;need&quot;, Boss emails get high attention always (one of my few &quot;must be 0&quot; folders), and the rest are just held until the next coffee break and and browsed over a coffee.<p>Comparing it to finance I think is actually a risky thing as you have an obligation with finances (debt), but you don&#x27;t necessarily have an obligation to all the items in your inbox. First step is allow yourself to acknowledge this. The world won&#x27;t end if you don&#x27;t answer some items or if you don&#x27;t happen to watch a unique one-of-a-kind youtube video.<p>I used to digitally horde when I was in University because bandwidth was a commodity and I never knew if I&#x27;d ever have a chance to see certain movies or play certain games again. I kept multiple 50 disk spindles of Wii and GCN games I knew I would never play because I was just so into the process of using my modded Wii that the process was the attraction, not the actual games themselves.<p>Eventually, I just fell into minimalism naturally. Moving cross country and emigrating helped a bit here as it changed my priorities from &quot;hoard as much as possible&quot; to &quot;why the hell did I buy a novelty bottle opener in the first place?&quot; as my needs changed.<p>With reading, realize that a lot of it is garbage and learn to filter good sources from bad ones. This is regrettably easier said than done, but it&#x27;s an old university habit I learned because necessity (read: laziness) meant I needed to find premiere papers fast and sort good sources rich with information from bad ones.<p>For articles in particular, I ended up just taking a long look at the articles I came back to and found the style that resonated with me the most and that I felt had the biggest impact on the way I think. Challenging articles with good logical thought processes that advanced my thinking or articles on subjects I was not familiar with but knew enough to start on really got my interest and typically are my clicks on sites like HN. I avoid too many content aggregators, especially ones with heavy focus on karma&#x2F;upvotes&#x2F;whatever as the metric is perverse towards interesting content in my opinion and more just interested in adding content to get the reward. I use other content aggregators like Instagram, but very sparingly as I just don&#x27;t feel the need to keep on top of tons of trends; if it hits one of the few sites I check regularly, it means it&#x27;s a premiere meme or topic and usually I can spend a few minutes researching on my own to figure out what&#x27;s up.<p>I shifted to become a creator of my own; my own code, stories, writing just for me, videos, etc, and it changed the way I viewed content available. Once I started making my own things with my mind and hands, suddenly I didn&#x27;t feel so compelled to watch others do the same. It&#x27;s one part arrogance I guess and one part freedom. (e.g., I used to really be into FoodNetwork even to the point of getting into reality shows. I told myself it was to learn to cook, but I never ever did it. Then I just started doing it, first for myself so that my mistakes were private, and once I thought &quot;eyyyy this was an alright meal&quot;, I started to share it with friends and family, and sure enough, even my mistakes were happily eaten. Ugly but tasty)<p>If you&#x27;re going to use one of your options, I&#x27;d say go with bankruptcy. Just like how a spring cleaning is therapeutic once you work up the will for it, so is cleaning out your digital footprint. I&#x27;ve been working from MacBook Airs since 2012 (2 of them in fact! 2012 and 2019, and the 2012 is still kicking with a friend who needed a new laptop), so I got very used to a small digital foot print fast. I kept only the pictures I really treasured and felt an immediate emotional response to each time I check them, and realized that the rest were like any other fad, and my attraction passed.<p>Clean out what you have and do the great purge. The first one hurts and you might have a few false starts while you wait for the right moment with the motivation to clean, but once you hit that moment, you ought feel a lot of stress and weight lifted off of you.