The Big Cull Part 2: Tidying Up the Virtual Spaces of Your Life & What to Turn Your Attention to

Ever felt the weight of a cluttered inbox or a chaotic digital life? That's the beast I'm wrestling in this engaging session. As your guide on this journey of simplification, I reveal the sweet victory in hitting 'unsubscribe' on endless promotional emails. Imagine opening your inbox to find only the messages that matter, the ones that deserve your attention amidst the frenetic buzz of the digital age. This week, we're zooming in on not just tidying up those unruly emails but also refining our virtual spaces—favorites, watchlists, and more—to align with our evolving interests and passions.

Join us as we transform overwhelming digital clutter into an oasis of order. I share my personal experiences, the pitfalls and peaks, of cutting through the noise, and how these small, intentional actions can lead to a larger landscape of lifestyle optimization. It's not just about email management; it's about creating an environment that echoes our current selves, free from the remnants of past priorities. If you're ready to reclaim your digital domain and foster a serene space that's truly reflective of you, let's embark on this adventure together, one uncluttered click at a time.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:33

Welcome back to another episode of Talk Mode. I'm your host, wahab, and today we're going to be talking about in fact, we're going to be continuing our conversation regarding the big call from last week and answering a listener question. Let's get into it. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Talk Mode. As mentioned in the intro, we're going to be looking at continuing our conversation regarding the big call. So if you listened to last week's episode and if not, I'd recommend you go back and listen to that we talked about calling a whole lot of things out of your life. We focus mainly in the digital area of things, but there's also physical things that you can call out of your life. That's subscriptions, etc. Etc. Both financially and just things that take your attention away from other things that you're supposed to be focused on. And, as I've mentioned before, this is an ongoing journey for me. I'm just sharing my current journey with you, so it's ever evolving and I recorded last week's episode and then thought about more ideas that, or started working on more things that I'm trying to call. So one of those things that I actually realized is quite a big thing.

Speaker 1: 2:09

Let's take work and work emails. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty disciplined with my emails and my day to day job. Right, get very organized, put everything in folders that is supposed to be by client, etc. Etc. And then the stuff that sits in my main inbox is stuff that I need to action or I need to read or something needs to happen with it. But then you go and look at my personal inbox just my normal email address and I want to say there's about 30,000 unread emails just lying around in the inbox. Nothing's in folders. I literally checked my emails and I grabbed the odd one that I need to read and I actually read it and I realized that the big like why am I not prioritizing my personal inbox and being organized with my personal stuff? But I'm organized when it comes to my work. So I thought, well, this is something that I can do. Now, how does that relate into the calling? Well, we tend to give our email addresses out every time we buy something online or sign up to some sort of website or whatever, and historically I've not been very good about unticking the. Don't send me any promotions boxes and that basically means I get a lot of emails from a lot of different companies while I have different things. So what I started to do and this is a work in progress because, as I said, there's like good 30,000 unread emails, so it's going to take a while but what I started to do is starting to unsubscribe from all these mailing lists and then search the company and delete all the emails I can find, because, ultimately, the companies in there that I probably haven't shopped with for a few years yet I still get emails from all the time. I'm trying to get a little bit better with that, organize that and clear that out.

Speaker 1: 4:20

Another thing that sort of you can call from all the time that you're wasting is all the attention you're given to is like oh you know, clear up your favorites and that kind of thing. Not that I particularly sit there and click on my favorites, but I've got favorites that I set in my favorites like three years ago because I was interested in a particular article or stuff like that. It's the same thing as my YouTube to watch list on my Netflix to watch list. Is that something I was interested in at one point? I did it in the to watch list, or I did it to my favorites and then walked away from it, never ended up watching it. Now I'm not interested anymore, but it's all still sitting there. It's all just noise and mess that doesn't need to be there, same as the email subscriptions, that let's optimize our environment so that the stuff that is there is stuff that was valuable to us today and will be interested in it today. Yeah, that's just an additional thought on top of all the stuff we talked about last week. So this is going to be an ever evolving conversation because I'm going to keep coming up with new things that I want to change or improve and every time I do, I intend to share that with you and hopefully you find that valuable.

Speaker 1: 5:52

So, talking about yourselves, we actually got a question regarding this last episode that we recorded last week regarding the calling, and we got a question from dear on YouTube to say and the other side of the calling coin and quotation marks is what you fill the gaps with to cure your environment and what things that better align with your current values, goals, mindsets, etc. Will be interesting to hear your thoughts around what new things you want to bring into the frame this year, and you know what. That puts me on to a really good topic is something that I want to bring in, but I want to thank you guys for listening and given questions like this and if you want to leave us a comment, and please go ahead and leave us a comment on YouTube and if you don't, you can go to YouTube, search for our originals or talk mode and find a podcast there and leave comments on episode if you so wish. But let's address that. That was going to be an episode that we did and the Marshal pilot in here. So I talked about last week.

Speaker 1: 7:06

Attention is your number one asset and therefore you should only be paying attention to things that are going to benefit you. We were doing this whole optimizing our environment by calling out subscriptions and all these extra things that take our attention away from the things that we could be focusing in on. But that leaves us with a gap of time, right, and that's what Diaz is alluding to. So what are we going to fill that time with? So me personally, this year and I already read a fair bit, as you would have noticed for all the book reviews, and this year I've kind of set myself the task of reading more nonfiction, self help and self improvement business books is what I'm intending to do here. So at the moment, the most recent book I read is Art of Influence and Influence People, and you will be receiving a book review on that very soon. But yeah, we're working on some other books. Obviously did Atomic Cavits, which you would have heard the review on that a few days ago or last week that would have been. And yeah, there's a few more books that are on that list currently reading the subtle art of not giving a fuck, only just getting into our first couple of pages. So I'll let you know how that goes and there'll be a review for that. So that's one thing.

Speaker 1: 8:41

I also try to fill a bit more time focusing in on my health. So spend more time working our great gym etc. And spend more time outside we spend. I've worked a traditional 95 job, so I was spending eight hours in front of a screen, and then my hobbies are gaming, watching TV series, watching movies again more hours in front of the screen. Something happens. I want to spend some better time in social media, more hours in front of a screen, and now I'm sitting here editing this episode, and that's more hours in front of a screen. So what? We need to spend some time with all the damn screen, and so, by optimizing all these things and avoiding the doom scroll.

Speaker 1: 9:35

I spend more time going for a little walk, taking in the fresh air, that kind of thing, and hopefully over the year, as I try new things and develop new habits, I'll find some new hobbies that will be a bit more versatile compared to what I currently do. So, yeah, that's what I'm trying to fill my time in with. This is what I'm making time for to improve, to learn, to develop new skills. That is the aim. I want to thank you guys very much for joining me today and listening to my thoughts. Let me know what you think about the big goal and what are you currently working on? Calling our year life? Take care, guys, I'll see you next week.