I love to learn. I mean LOVE to learn….no really….Loooovvveee to learn! I may even say a bit obsessed with it.

When I was 18 and first met one of my hero’s Mr. Motivation himself, Zig Ziglar, I became amazed, excited and a devoted student of personal growth and development. I was always interested in becoming better than your current self, but his way of delivering powerful messages took it to a whole other level for me! Meeting him in person and feeling his energy and connection to life remains one of the highlights of my life today!

I’ve remained a student for my entire adult life now and will always be a student. You may have heard the saying, The books you read today, and the people you surround yourself with will create the person you will become in 5 years.  Or the saying; your income and success are predicted by your closest circle of friends and acquaintances… You are the average of the 5 people you are most surrounded by today.

Whatever saying you use, it’s all true.

I am saying this because I believe the more you expand your mind, the more productive, happy and fulfilled you will become.

There is no coincidence that the most successful people are living a life full out, fulfilled and happy, because they have been life long learners!

NOW…having said this, My message for you is to quit learning!

WHAT the heck are you talking about, Heather. You just blabbered about how much you love to learn now you’re saying quit. Make up your mind!

Let me clarify. Learn all you want and don’t stop learning. But make a strategic decision what to focus on and commit to that thing. Create a more focused plan. Your brain can only retain so much information at once, and last I checked, most business owners had plenty occupying many other minds.

If you’re like many other business owners I talk with, life can be overwhelming enough. People like me that love to learn and have an appetite for books and seek new things every day. The challenge with seeking too much is not giving your brain time to absorb, process and take action if you need to act on something.

Overwhelm is a real thing. It’s paralyzing sometimes and leads to unproductivity, stress and turns into a lack of motivation.

I’m not saying quit learning, I’m saying let’s manage the learning and reduce the overwhelm.

There’s a long list of wonderful methods to help manage the learning curve and reduce the overwhelmed while creating more fulfillment and success.

However, today I want to focus on one method that is scary, freeing and necessary sometimes!

TAKE CONTROL OVER YOUR INBOX AND UNSUBSRIBE to EMAIL!!!

Eeeek…. This is a huge one for me. As a learner, reader and student, I want to know what everyone is saying, doing, promoting, selling, and gossiping about! (Maybe not so much gossip, but just current events and news!)

About once a year I will go through a whole purge process with my email(s). Throughout the course of the year, I’ll sign up for discounts, news, specials, etc in my personal email box so I don’t miss out on the latest promotions, coach sales, or airline deals! Before I know it, my inbox is overflowing with new messages each day. My business accounts will accumulate new marketers, new products, and new messages that I truly want to learn and master, but just don’t have enough time.

A few months ago my inbox was over 16,000 unread messages. Okay, that’s ubsurd, right! (I have quite a few different email addresses I manage! )

YES, it is absurd! I know there are teams dedicated to going through email, but the truth is how much can you manage at once?

Can you relate to an overflowing inbox? Maybe not 16,000 messages, but messages that you would love to read but just can’t get to them all.

I’m not talking about customer service and client messages, of course, just the messages that are kind of like magazines and books sitting on your shelves. They can help you, they will help you, but are they the right ones right now?

UNROLL.Me is a great service that will help you sort your emails and essentially ‘hold’ or delete from sources you no longer want. I would recommend this for a personal account to finally get off of retailers and marketers come back from the dead campaigns (I’m not sure if this is a real thing, but it sounded good at the moment).
Unroll.me will allow you to decide who/what you want to keep, delete and just hold in their daily, rollup message so you can quickly sort in one email.
This is a huge help.

Now comes the really really tough one for me. In my business accounts….decide on a small handful of lists you want to remain on and then unsubscribe to the rest. Don’t worry, you can always return later, everyone will gladly accept you back into their lists.
Why is this such a big deal?

Well, as I mentioned earlier. Overwhelm is a real thing. Concentrate on a few key ideas and people that support you in your current goals. Just as having too many voices in the room talking at once is overwhelming, so can your email inbox when you are thrown all the new gadgets, software, programs, ideas, money saving tips, the latest new thing that was the latest new thing five years ago, etc.

IT WILL ALL STILL BE THERE WHEN YOU’RE READY!

I say this with conviction. Cut the noise, cut the cord, do it and move on. It doesn’t have to be a forever cord cutting, just right now if it does not 100% serve you with your current goals, plans and growth curve.

Yes, I do love to learn and highly suggest learning. My goal this year is to read a book a week and have been off to a great start. I’ve learned some great enhancements on focus and memorization thanks to my NeuroWisdom expert, Mark Waldman, and my brain trainer, Jim Kwik.

However, all the new things I am allowing in my brain and more importantly in my email list ONLY pertain to what I need right now that will enhance and support my 12-month goals.

This is a sad day as I am once again this year unsubscribing to a few lists. I have to. Not that I want to leave, but it’s necessary to regain control and clarity of my email inbox. I have to declutter and only manage what I can right now. I’m over 12,000 emails in my inbox right now. It’s time for a few things to go.

So in summary, use unroll.me to help you manage and clean up your inbox. Only subscribe to those lists, people, and things that are directly related to supporting your current goals. You can always come back to them later.

I support you in unsubscribing to email lists, even if it includes mine! ONLY stay on the lists that will help you RIGHT NOW!!!

It’s all about being more efficient, and living full out to achieve extraordinary fulfillment!! 🙂