In today’s tech-oriented world, information is unlimited. We have our emails cluttered with hundreds of thousands of messages, our apps filled with junk, and our browsers cluttered with unused extensions. This term is known as “Digital Hoarding,” and it is increasingly becoming common in our everyday lives. The problems have become so common that there are thousands of YouTube videos on how to declutter and how you can digitally cleanse yourself for a better future.
In this article, we will explore what digital hoarding is, why it is harmful, and some practical tips to eliminate this habit while incorporating tools like Mail Genie to reclaim control over your inbox.
What Exactly is Digital Hoarding?
Digital hoarding is also known as e-hoarding or cyber hoarding. It basically incorporates the excessive accumulation of digital materials. But what exactly is this digital material that we are talking about?
For starters, we have emails. 35% of emails are left unread, according to a study. So, we all have hundreds of subscriptions that we don’t even need. There are also things like photos, videos, messages, apps, and files.
The term digital hoarding was first introduced in a 2015 case study, basically describing a man who took thousands of photos daily while also organizing them. But due to fear that he might need them later, he wouldn’t delete them.
Nowadays, we have cheap cloud storage and other mediums where storing data can be super easy. Amassing them will only cause issues, which we will cover later, but here are some digital hoarding manifestations in different forms.
Email Hoarder: People who keep every email and subscribe to many newsletters, making their emails flooded with useless junk, ultimately making them run out of storage.
App Hoarders: Storing countless applications that are rarely used. This decreases the speed of your device, along with taking away your storage.
Photo/Video Hoarders: Storing countless images or videos along with duplicates due to either emotional attachment or fear of deleting the important ones.
Bookmark Hoarders: Some people keep endless website links as bookmarks, most of which are never visited and are useless.
Collecting different items or emails isn’t inherently bad, but when it becomes a huge mess, that’s where you start to have all sorts of problems. So, let’s uncover why digital hoarding is harmful.
Harms of Digital Hoarding
Digital Hoarding might seem harmless and a part of our daily lives, but that is not true. Just think about it like this. Let’s say you have a pile of magazines in your bedroom, and that’s where you go to sleep every day. For most people, it will bother them.
The impacts can not only affect you personally but also professionally. Here are some of the harms that we found are linked to digital hoarding:
- Reduced Productivity:
With a cluttered digital space, it will become increasingly complex for you to locate items. You will be wasting a lot of time. With the example of email, if you have hundreds of unread emails, then finding the most important one would become such a chore. That’s why people are resorting to tools like Mail Genie in order to unsubscribe from email newsletters that they don’t need anymore.
- Psychological Stress and Anxiety
Consistently accumulating digital clutter can not only overwhelm you, but it can also cause you anxiety. Searching for that one important email, finding the right app on time, or looking for an important link, these little time-wasting moments become psychological stress and anxiety for most people.
- Risk of Cybersecurity Attacks
Hoarding digital data, such as old emails, documents, or other files, increases the likelihood of a cyberattack on you. Hackers can exploit the old files, and some can even send you emails with links that will give them access to your data. Therefore, we should always be cautious about where we send and receive data.
Tips to Stop Digital Hoarding
Breaking the cycle of digital hoarding will give you a better perspective of life, allowing you to counter many issues like anxiety, unproductivity, and a lot more. Here are some elite methods you could use to stop digital hoarding today.
- Unsubscribe from Unnecessary Newsletters:
Newsletters are one of the biggest issues that modern smartphones have. When you have hundreds of subscribed newsletters, daily emails can make your inbox a cluttered mess. So, using a tool like Mail Genie, you can simply log in from your Google or other accounts to unsubscribe from bulk email newsletters.
But what makes Mail Genie different from other manual unsubscribe services for emails? Firstly, it offers smart unsubscribe, where you can unsubscribe from newsletters and promotional emails in a single click.
Moreover, you can even categorize and manage your subscriptions effectively to keep the useful ones and discard the rest. Once you use Mail Genie, managing your email list becomes easier for you.
- Assess Your Digital Clutter:
Understanding and evaluation is the first part of stopping digital hoarding once and for all. Check your inboxes, photo gallery, desktop, cloud storage, and all the other places that need cleaning. You should also ask yourself if these items inside are necessary or not.
If not, you should either keep them in the same folder and store somewhere far on a hard drive or simply delete them.
- Prioritizing Deletion:
When people want to declutter, they often use the 4D method. This method incorporates Do, Defer, Delegate, Delete, a powerful framework that lets you delete lots of digital clutter including emails.
Do: Here, if the deletion process is urgent, go for it!
Defer: Schedule time to handle it later if it’s not urgent.
Delegate: You can delegate it to someone else if the decluttering process is not your responsibility.
Delete: Remove it completely if it’s irrelevant or outdated. This could be old spam emails or other things.
How Mail Genie Can Help You
If you struggle with email hoarding, Mail Genie offers you a practical solution to not only reclaim control but never have issues like email hoarding in general. Mail Genie provides you tools to:
Unsubscribe in Bulk: Remove yourself from unwanted newsletter and other emails in a few clicks.
Smart Filtering: Mail Genie sorts your emails into different categories like newsletters, work, and others so you don’t have to do a lot of manual labour.
Real-Time Updates: For instant notifications for new subscriptions. This way, you can keep your inbox up to date.
If you’re looking for a free and cost-effective solution of eliminating digital junk from your email, then Mail Genie is the perfect solution for you.
Final Verdict
Digital Hoarding is one of the most underrated causes of low storage, anxiety, and a lot of productivity issues. With different tricks, you can get rid of digital hoarding and move towards a bright, better future.