Let's talk about digital minimalism. This is actually a topic that gets me really excited( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). because look we live in a digital world
I think that's old news at this point. And I personally see digital spaces as an extension to our physical ones
We spend what half of our time online on our computers on our phones just like minimalism in real life if you will
I find that removing the distractions and streamlining processes. You can get so much more done. You can be so much more focused
So today I'm starting a new series precisely on this topic. It's really simple
I'm going to walk you through my system system. I've got here starting with your email
Okay, so the goal here is really simple
We want to have the clearest least stressful experience possible in our inboxes in our email, right?
What's the least stressful we can make it?
Well, what if there were no emails which I know sounds crazy, but bear with me
Alright, welcome to my inbox as you can see here. There is no new emails. This is a concept known as inbox zero
It's a concept that was developed by a guy named Merlin Mann and I want to break down
How I'm able to do this into two parts
The first is the system that I use and the second is the tools that help me to be able to do this
So let's take a look. First of all at the sidebar as you can see
There aren't a lot of logos here a lot of icons here
I've paired it down to only the things that I really need. This is really easily customizable in the settings
Google lets you configure things. How you like
So as you can see
I have my inbox I have starred which I'm going to explain in a little bit sent drafts and in my folders
Okay, I've boringly named it folders. You can call this whatever you want
The way you create folders is by if you hit more and go down to the bottom creating a new label
That's Google's way of saying folder
You can create a folder and name it whatever you like and you can also nest folders within other folders
So what I've done is create a single
Top-level folder that contains everything else within it some people might think that's a little excessive which is fair enough
Pick and choose the info that you want to use and implement for yourself
But I find that it's a really great way to keep everything looking really nice and clean within folders are
four major categories if you will
Which I've separated first by numbers in the order that I want to see them and also by color
Let me explain what these labels are
It is my belief that no matter who you are because your life is obviously not going to look like mine
But no matter who you are, you can probably divide your life into three or four major categories
So for you it might be I don't know school
Career and personal so the way I sort of break things down is the Faneuil drew is my presence online
The stuff that I do on YouTube, etc
Work is stuff that I do as a freelancer as a filmmaker and photographer and how I make money
Although I'm trying to transition that from this to this and then personal
which is everything that doesn't really fit into these two so it could be
Emails with friends emails with family and finally archives
Which is past
Emails from previous years I break Nathaniel drew down into income and expenses, which I think is very important to track
brand related emails and support which is emails with viewers and questions that I receive and in you know,
Sometimes people will email me with encouragement and I love to keep all that in one place
It's very valuable to me same sort of concept for work
I break it down into current projects and shoots personal is broken down into future travels and spiritual which is really funny
Yeah
Spiritually emails and finally if I open up archives, you will find the same three labels here that can take emails from past years
so I recently just transitioned everything over as
2019 started as well as another folder which includes money related emails
Always lives in the archives section
One thing that I find very helpful is to color code everything within these top level folders as the same color
So everything under Nathaniel Drew is blue
for example, if I were to open up an email within one of these folders
You will find that there's a really convenient and helpful label up at the top here
That shows me within which folder this email is stored as well as the color and you very quickly are able to so see
Oh, yeah blue that has to do with YouTube and the stuff that I'm doing online
And so if you're one of those kinds of people I certainly find that
Colors and visuals helped me to organize my thoughts and in my life in general again. I'm not too concerned about
Breaking things down super specifically because your life is going to look different than mine
But I have found that you don't need a ton of sub labels and it's really really important to be super specific
you almost have to approach this as if you're gonna be gone for an entire decade right stranded on a
an island and you come back all of a sudden and you have to be able to
Understand the structure you laid out for yourself
You are not going to remember what emails were in vaguely named folders like random other
Miscellaneous. Alright, so let's talk about some of the tools that helped me be able to maintain a system like this
First of all, is this convenient little feature starred?
If you don't see the star here
You can easily configure that in the settings and I use this feature to remove
Important emails that I can't quite archive just yet into another folder that is in my inbox
Alright, so the next tool is the just general archive button. So if I open up this email again, I believe this can be
Configured in the settings this archive button. It's basically it's a way to
Remove the email without trashing it so you still have it. It archives it into a general archive folder
So you still have access to it?
however
You're not going to find it in any of your folders and you're not going to find it in your inbox
For example, this is a really useful tool for emails that don't easily fit into any particular category
But you also don't want to get rid of them
and finally
This is maybe a little bit obvious to some of you guys but it's still a really powerful tool is
The search bar the search bar is the only reason I feel comfortable
Archiving all of my emails in the way that I do because it's such an effective
Tool that I use to be able to find any emails that I need
you can use it to search words that were in the email that you're looking for the subject line the email address the name of
The person you are emailing it's a great way to find anything that you need and it has always worked whenever I've needed it
So I just want to talk a little bit now about habits and how you can make this happen
Obviously can be really overwhelming. I've seen some people's emails and it's just chaos eight thousand twelve thousand emails
That's not a good environment to be clear and concise. First of all, I would say
Start by going straight to the source. So if you can put a little bit of time every day
towards unsubscribing to
Newsletters and other promotions and stuff like that that you don't need or want
Over time you will see that you will be receiving a lot less email in your inbox and I do this all the time
I just unsubscribe from the mailing list for
Uber eats but in Spanish like I don't even know why I had those emails. There you go. I found it
It leave me nice to cookies young
Perfect updated
Clear that yep. So unsubscribing is the first thing the second is
Maintaining this doesn't really actually take a lot of time
I find that a few minutes in the morning and then a few minutes in the afternoon or evening
is
enough to
Really keep things super clean and once you get into the rhythm of doing that it can actually get a lot easier to stay on
Top of things. It's also probably not a great idea to be on your email all day long
Anyway, so I find that this helps me to
Do what I need to get done and spend less time in my email. All right
I hope that that was helpful to you
Like I said doing this sort of thing really felt like it had a positive impact on my clarity and focus
So I'd love to hear if you guys implement this at all how it goes for you if you're interested in seeing more
content like this keep your eyes peeled because like I said,
this is part one in a series that I'll be releasing over the next few weeks and
There's actually already an episode available exclusively on my patreon
Which is a great way to support me and to help me create more videos like this
so there's a link down below go check it out if that interests you otherwise
subscribe so that you are notified when the other episodes in this series come out and finally
I just had to mention this I do have a newsletter
So if you're looking for ways to fill up in box with the right kind of stuff
There's a link to that down below as well. Alright, that is enough for me. I'll see you soon