I Accidentally Deleted All of My Emails And Why I Would Do It Again
You wouldn’t believe what I learned.
Like many people, I have become a digital hoarder over the years. In some cases, I still have emails from over 15 years ago. Over time, these digital artifacts add up.
I have a half dozen email accounts… which means I have tens of thousands of emails that I’ve been accumulating for far too long. It’s much easier to defend this type of hoarding since no physical objects are being stored.
A few weeks ago, I accidentally deleted every single email in one of my email accounts. We’re talking *thousands* of emails. This was due to technical confusion mixed with user error. I won’t get into the details of how this happened, but if I had been paying attention I could’ve restored those emails within 7 days due to the way my email account empties its trash. But, I didn’t.
And I’m so glad I didn’t.
My initial reaction upon discovering this blunder was a mixture of fear, shame, guilt, and complete panic. A few days later, it turned into relief.
From the moment you start tidying, you will be compelled to reset your life. As a result, your life will start to change.
-Marie Kondo
Digital hoarding
Marie Kondo is famous for her philosophy on how to “tidy up” physically hoarded items. However, hoarding can extend to the digital world. To my surprise, “digital hoarding”¹ is not a term that I just coined. It’s a real phenomenon.
Sometimes it happens by accident (seriously, who takes the time to cull thousands of emails every year?). Laziness is often at play.
Sometimes it’s intentional. I’ve met several digital hoarders in my career and they have large computer hard drives that they spend good money and time backing up all the time. They fear deleting anything — emails, files, etc.
In the end, people are unable to discard things either because they are attached to the past or afraid of the future.
-Marie Kondo
The impact of digital hoarding² is deeper than people understand. For me, it was the stress of the existence of so many emails. And many were flagged for “follow-up” later. Although, I couldn’t tell you why now.
Some of those emails had personal information in them. Some had a digital footprint of my spending habits and amounts. I will most likely not know all that I’ve lost with those emails, but is it really a big deal?
But what about…?
We live in a cloud world. Nearly everything is stored online. I thought about the impact of not having those emails anymore, which led to my initial freak out.
Then I remembered how accessible my information is.
Our digital systems are engineered to store our information in duplicate places. Need a login? It’s probably already stored in your browser saved logins list. Need a password? Same as above, or stored in a master password app on your smartphone. Need a copy of a bank statement? Most banks have your entire statement history available on their website. Need an email attachment? If you’re like me, you’ve already downloaded and saved it to your computer and kept the email as “backup”.
The freedom of deleting
As I thought through all of my “but what about…” questions, I realized quickly that I don’t need those emails. I don’t need the information stored in them.
In fact, not having them anymore is freedom.
Life becomes far easier once you know that things will still work out even if you are lacking something.
-Marie Kondo
It’s possible that one important detail has been missed somewhere and I’ll kick myself down the road.
But I’m not betting on it.
I’m off to “accidentally delete” the emails in my other accounts now.
Resources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_hoarding
- https://vantagepointrecovery.com/ever-heard-of-digital-hoarding/
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