Delete it, don't be afraid
Perhaps there is a baby bear strategy?
Archive: Anything you have a feeling might be useful
Delete: Anything you’re pretty sure would be useless in the future
Like Chris Coyier, I also archived practically all my messages with Gmail in the past. This took me in recent times to take a dive into the past like with a time machine, and it was nice too1. But in reality it makes no sense. Purchase confirmations, flight notifications, newsletters and mailing lists, shipment tracking, reservation tickets, invoices, payment notices, etc.: I’ve been deleting everything for a few years now.
I archive in my inbox only the conversations that make sense (especially those that come from the blog2) and those that contain documents, but only until I can save them elsewhere. I temporarily keep – until read or delivered – newsletters and purchase confirmations: then I delete them; for events and trips I do the same thing, with the difference that I create a dedicated label that I remove upon return or shortly after.
My inbox is much cleaner and the delete button has definitely taken on the importance of the archive button. Always archiving is useless, it’s not healthy. Delete it, don’t be afraid.
Regarding the use of Gmail, given the persistent use of some Google services recently, I am making some partial re-evaluations. But I’ll come back to it another time. ↩︎
Write to me and you will be preserved! :) ↩︎