Living in quadrant II

I've decided to take back my electronic life. I have been trying to carve out a little more time for me, and realized how much time I was spending sifting through my email accounts. I used to have a great system with folders that certain emails went to automatically, but somehow the inbox is completely overrun and the folders are of no help. As a big believer in Stephen Covey, I was thoroughly dismayed to see how much time I was spending on the "not important, not urgent" tasks in Quadrant IV rather than the "important, not urgent" tasks in Quadrant II.

Over the years, I have gotten on so many lists for daily, weekly, monthly newsletters and special offers that I now either skim or delete without reading. The past two days, all of my free time has gone towards getting off of all of these lists! It's been pretty easy (albeit time consuming) so far - most of them have an instant unsubscribe or a quick check box. Only one has been troublesome in that I had to log on and change my preferences - which meant I needed to remember the user id and password I used for something I probably signed up for 10 years ago... They all say it takes a few days to get cleared in their systems, but this morning I had less email than usual so I can already see a difference!

Since it is the holiday season, I am getting email from pretty much every place I have ever shopped at or in as well, so I am hoping to get rid of all of those in the coming weeks. The plan then will be to stay on top of it - if I get a new promo from a store I recently shopped online, I need to be sure to unsubscribe right away. Better yet - I'll look for the box I'm sure must be there when I place my order that says "please don't send me any stuff besides this order". Yeah right.

Now if I could do the same thing with all of this paper around here...