Pete Alexander2x TEDx Speaker and best-selling author helping transform burned out workers into engaged colleagues.

Stress Relief Tool - Email Purge

9 Jan 2019 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

1:33

In this short instructional video, the speaker proposes a simple stress‑relief technique for professionals overwhelmed by a large backlog of unread work emails. The core claim is that most unread messages become irrelevant after a short absence, so bulk‑deleting them without reading is safe and reduces anxiety about missed follow‑ups. The speaker outlines a three‑step procedure: (1) click the first new email, (2) scroll to the last new email, hold Shift and click it to select the entire range, (3) press Delete. After executing the purge, the speaker advises taking a deep breath and moving on with the day. The video frames the method as a pragmatic way to free mental bandwidth and avoid the stress of tracking numerous individual requests.

Chapters

If you get a ton of email at work, and who doesn't, rather than going through the deluge of hundreds or even thousands of emails that might have piled up while you've been on vacation, consider deleting them without ever looking at them. If someone sent you an email and it's still important, they will follow up with you once you've returned. But chances are the vast majority of your emails will have taken care of themselves by the time you get back. And this also applies even if you haven't been on vacation. If you've been just swamped and your email is piling up, go ahead and try deleting the bulk of them. What it'll do is it will free you from the stress of thinking about how you're possibly going to follow up with all those individual requests. So here's how you do it. You click on the first brand new email that you've got. You scroll down to the very last new email that you've got. You hold the Shift key down. You click on that last message. And then go ahead and click the delete key. And then the last step is take a deep breath and go on with your day.