Deciding what is worth keeping for years
Tell which messages deserve to outlive your mailbox.
A mailbox is a good place to find things and a poor place to keep them forever.
Accounts get closed, providers change their rules, and passwords get lost. Anything you would be genuinely sorry to lose should exist somewhere besides an email account. That is a small list, and naming it is the whole skill.
The keepers are proof and memory. Proof means warranties, closing papers, tax records, insurance policies, receipts for anything expensive. Memory means letters from people, photographs, and the note somebody wrote you that you would read again. Everything else, however useful this month, is weather.
Key points
- A mailbox finds things well and keeps things poorly.
- Keep proof and keep memory. Let the rest go.
- If somebody else can reissue it, you do not need it.
- Save real keepers as files, not just stars.
- Precious things deserve a second copy somewhere.
What to remember
- A saved file outlives the account it came from.
- Keep what cannot be reissued, and let the rest go.
- Anything truly precious should exist in more than one place.
Try this
Search your mailbox for the word warranty this afternoon, and save the two most valuable results as PDF files on your computer.
Practice: Deciding what is worth keeping for years. Your first lesson is free, with no account or card; the rest are part of a Lantern plan. Interactive lessons require JavaScript.