‘Tis the season to unsubscribe

‘Tis the season when everyone in your email contacts or your subscriptions sends you a pitch for products, services, last-minute holiday gifts. 

I understand it. I do. Why not get in on the frenzy while it is fully in play? Desperate shoppers click on a button and might wind up with a gift that they can have delivered. Then: relief.

I like the way Gmail categorizes emails into primary, social, promotions and forums. 

This way I can focus on the primary mailbox, and then ignore the others or re-assign things from my primary folder into a different one and then prioritize which order I read things. I have spent some time re-categorize emails so that my Inbox is much more manageable.

But I also try to do something this time of year to just clear out the junk and constant communication – unsubscribe! It is something I spent time on yesterday, while procrastinating the shopping I did not want to do. I was tired, and I am still recovering from a cold. So I decided to do something useful as I sat and drank my tea.

I have written before about how how I take media breaks now and then to keep my sanity. I suspect I will be doing this a bit during the holidays, and I may drop in with a haiku now and then. But I want to take at least a couple of days cold-turkey from the phone and the computer.

Remember the old days when people actually had conversations face to face and did not have a phone near them? The phone was on the wall, and someone had to call us before we would pick it up.

Okay, I’m dating myself here…I can see the millennials rolling their eyes. But what if you did some of this? Maybe you would have JOMO instead of FOMO! Instead of the fear of missing out, you would have the JOY of missing out. Try it, and you might like it.

Go easy on yourself if you get bored. Your brain is used to the dopamine hits it gets from being reinforced by the phone. But boredom is good for you! You may end up thinking a little more. You may end up getting a little creative, without the constant distraction. Maybe you’ll have some great new connections with people. Maybe you’ll have a little more sex… who knows what awaits?

Enjoy.