Delete Delete Delete

I'm so proud. I brought the number of unread emails in my inbox under a hundred.

I guard my email address zealously. I am only on a few email lists, mostly for organizations that encourage me to think of myself as I would like to be.

• Expert (ok, conversant) on businesses in New Jersey--NJBIZ.com
• New media mogul--GoDaddy.com
• Self-supporting freelance writer--eLance.com

Boy, do they send me a lot of emails! And if I get busy for a few days, which often happens, I can't even sign in to my account, let alone delete unwanted messages. After more than a few days, I hate to even scroll down my messages.

A salty old salesman I once worked with filed by the "foot method." He piled his paperwork up. When the stack was two feet high, he threw away the bottom foot. I take a similar approach to my emails. I sort by "sender" and delete the old unread messages. Annoyingly, some of my accounts put entirely different senders on various email messages, making this approach more difficult.

I also get emails from companies to which I have applied online. If I lose my job, I don't want to have to retrieve my account information for all of them. This has a handy side benefit. I'm sorry to say that several of my friends are out of work. When I get an email for a job that looks right for someone, I forward it to them. Here's hoping that I don't need those auto-alerts myself for a long time, and that they can help someone else.