The value of letting go

Gmail taught us to be digital hoarders. To save every email, every chat, every search. Because it might come in useful someday.

All that data might feel like a security blanket. But it creates real mental load.

Do you really need that email from 2010 coordinating movie plans? The shipping notification from 2014? Backed up files you’ll never actually look at again — files that could be a liability in a breach?

This digital clutter can have the same effect as physical clutter — overwhelm, the sense you can’t quite move on since you’re worried about what if.

I recently cleaned out years of digital detritus — tens of thousands of emails dating back more than 20 years, gigabytes of data in online storage.

One account now holds 45 total emails — just those that were particularly meaningful. Everything else? No longer a weight.

Turns out nothing I deleted was ever needed. It never was.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​