Blog Talk: Organising Emails

Retro to Go
My digitial world.

I have gone and done it....the unthinkable. Miss organised personified has become a techie messmonster of the worse kind. I managed to miss the emails for not only one but two parent teacher evenings this past week. This has never happened to me before!

I received a slip of paper from my son's school with a schedule of appointments starting at 8:30PM and ending at 9:40PM. Thankfully someone was efficient enough at the school to recognise my absence from the other super organised mothers. I can try blaming it on a number of things ( hormones?) but the reality is that they came in with one of many emails and went into that great email void.

I woke up this morning to another email but one that has made a difference to my day. The email is from Zen Habits and the post is entitled A Simple Guide for a Mindful Digital Life by Tyler Tervooren of Advanced Riskology. As I was reading the post I had an epiphany. It was so obvious, why hadn't I thought of it earlier?

Today I created a new world. A digital world devoted solely to all my social media accounts.  All those months ago, I thought blogging would result in a few extra emails and tied everything into our home email address. At the time, I also ticked every conceivable chance for Blogger, Facebook and Twitter to send me emails. Add to this, countless newsletter subscriptions. Sound familiar? The result: I am drowning in emails and losing sight of my life. Net Net Result: Mr. H and kids are grumpy with Mrs. H.

Today was the start of a back peddle through it all. I have set up a new email address and have tied all accounts relating to my blogging life into it.  I am creating a mindful digital life. I picked my identity, constructed a digital home, severed the ties that were holding me back and am ready to roll. One life for my physical world (home and family) and another for my digital world (blogs). I feel liberated!

Here are a few of the points from A Simple Guide for a Mindful Digital Life that started me thinking....
"Focus on the essential, cultivate your ties in social networks where it makes sense and is beneficial.
Get comfortable with shedding your past lives and evolving into new ones.
Integrate your physical and digital life in the simplest way possible.
Focus on the essential. Cultivate your ties in social networks where it makes sense and is beneficial,
but don't let them become second homes. Having many homes adds clutter to your digital world
just as it does in your physical world."

Some of you who know me well probably got a chuckle out of the last line. If I were to follow this article down to the last word I would be consolidating all my blogs into one and finding a way to merge my physical and digital world. Well, sometimes we have to take baby steps...this was a pretty good size step for me today. There is always tomorrow :)

My physical world this morning... chasing the sun in Surrey.

Hope you are having a good one!