Feeling overwhelmed by your text messages and emails? Counsellor Kim in Wrexham gives you some tips.

If you are like me, you may read a text or email and leave it in your inbox to deal with later.  I then have to remember that “later” I need to take action on a message which can cause me stress, or I forget, or I could deal with it now.  Sometimes we  have messages in our inbox which are years old, the inbox has become a storage device for information, and that information is muddled- mixing up current action messages with old reference messages.  This accumulation of messages can add to our feelings of stress.  Oliver Burkeman, a psychologist, says that if we can learn to distinguish between three types of email/text/message, then we can seriously reduce our data load.  The three types are “rubbish” which can be immediately deleted (the sorts of things which if they arrived on your doormat you would immediately discard); “archive” in a folder those emails which need no action but are worth keeping for future reference; and “active emails” that demand action.  Active emails are the only ones to remain in your inbox.  Good luck!