In a previous life I would watch every Oscar movie religiously. Those days are gone unfortunately but this was a great reminder as to why these movies are important. It’s easy to jump into a Marvel movie or my precious Lord of the Rings, but it’s movies like A Real Pain (which Jesse Eisenberg wrote, directed, and also starred in) that remind you that there is a difference between movies and film—as pretentious as that sounds. I really enjoyed it and it makes me want to call my siblings.

Also I got our tickets to the Wu-Tang + Run the Jewels tour today and I’m so pumped (the different artwork has been outrageous)!

I woke up on Monday morning with a 102°F/39°C fever.

As I type this on Friday afternoon, I’ve worked for maybe 3 hours all week and I’m still not feeling great.

My inbox is a disaster. My Slack looks like it has the chicken pox. It's all incredibly overwhelming so what am I gonna do? Blow it up!

I’m coming back from being sick and blowing up my inbox

What do I mean by blowing up my inbox? I’m gonna delete it all. Yes, you read that right. It’s all going away.

Will I miss anything? Maybe.

Will it be critical? Probably not.

Will they email me back? They always do.

And that’s exactly the point. Anything urgent will find it’s way back to me probably as soon as early next week because that’s how these things works.

Why delete everything?

Because I can. And so can you. I can still vividly remember getting back from an awesome vacation or after being sick and opening up a 1,000+ email inbox and feeling the absolute dread of needing to go through it all. My slack status would literally be “⚒️ digging out of my inbox” for at least 2 days. During those 2 days I’d then be stressed because I was missing the new things I was supposed to be working on and now instead of easing back into things, I was more stressed than before. So I said no more!

Do you actually delete everything?

Not everything but probably close to 90% if not more. Before I even open up that Gmail tab I put together a quick list of people I need to be on the lookout for emails from. When I was in-house that list looked like this:

1. CEO - in case there were any major company changes to be aware of

2. CMO - in case there were any major team changes to be aware of

3. My boss - because they’re my boss

4. My immediate direct reports - because they’re my people

5. Any stakeholders I was directly working with before going out - because they’d complain if I didn’t

That was maybe 8-10 people in total. I’d then go through my inbox, search for any emails from those people, filter them out of my inbox, then I’d go back, select all, and 🗑️ the rest. Then I’d review the emails I filtered out and within an hour I was caught up. Figure out who’s on your list and don’t look back.

The first time was terrifying. I was scared I missed something important. Then I quickly realized it was fine. There’s nothing your colleagues love more than hitting you with a “now that you’re back…” or “bumping this back to the top of your inbox” so everything that was deleted came back but in an orderly fashion. So I kept doing it.

And now I’m doing it again.

Can you really delete everything as a business owner?

You bet you can! The thing that’s different this time is that the list is going to be very different. No CEO, no boss, no reports. This is how I’m thinking about it for Monday (you better believe I’m still not feeling great and saving this for next week!):

1. Active clients - these are the people I’m working with and need to be aware of

2. Active prospects - these are the people I’d like to work with

3. Website intake forms - these are the people that would like to work with me

That’s it. I need to make sure I’m not letting my clients down. I need to make sure my next batch of clients are feeling good. I need to make sure that I haven’t' missed any inquiries. The rest of it can wait. That means I’m gonna miss newsletters, I’m gonna miss product updates, and yes, I’m gonna miss all those AI sales pitches. And you know what? It’ll be fine!

On Monday when I get started I’ll be back to inbox 0 and I’ll be able to focus on the real work as opposed to digging back out.

If this isn’t something you’ve tried, I highly recommend it. It’s going to be stressful at first—maybe even a little scary—but once you realize that most of what’s in your inbox is noise, your life becomes a lot clearer and the ramp up to getting back to work is a lot easier.

I’m looking to pick up another coaching client in the next few weeks. If you’re a Brand or Creative exec looking to grow your career, hit me up. Think of these weekly one-hour sessions as a way to grow your leadership skills, improve your influence, scale your team, and update your processes. This is some of my favorite work and I know it’s been incredibly rewarding for previous clients. You can usually expense these bad boys too.