Read This Before You Subscribe to Another Newsletter
By: Prakriti Kohli
Tags: E Mail Marketing, Newsletter, Writing, Productivity, Beyourself

Keeping Up With Them Newsletters

Photo by Ashley Batz on Unsplash

I knew that despite my concerns, I did not want to give up on newsletters.

If there was a problem in the system, it was in my improper handling of these gifts of knowledge I was lucky to be able to access so easily from world-over.

And while I did understand that reading books should always be foremost for their ability to help you build an opinion on a subject, newsletters made it easy to be introduced to those topics in the first place.

It is through constant introspection and re-engineering that I have designed my maxims on gaining the maximum out of newsletters without feeling overwhelmed, which I share below.

Understand Yourself

Incorporating the good habits of successful people has been an area of interest for me. When I learned that Mark Zuckerberg sets himself an annual challenge to gain new skills outside work, I was intrigued.

Newsletters can be a great way to receive expert guidance on a subject you find fascinating.

I have now built the habit of asking myself ‘What do I wish to know more about?’ and scout recommendations on the people covering those topics best. Equally important is to know what does not interest you and not let those E-mails spam your inbox by subscribing unmindfully.

Personally, in the last 6 months, I have gained an interest in the following topics and engaged with the below newsletters which help me uncover the topics in the manner most desirable to me.

Strategy: Everything Bundle

Trends insights: trends.vc

Indie-built niche tools: The Slice

Intersection of psychology and productivity: Ness Labs

I have also subscribed to David Perell’s and Nat Eliason’s curation-based newsletters for serendipity.

It is also worth mentioning that while I found some newsletters such as Indie Letters and Simon Blogs to be exceptional, I had to remove them from my inbox as I was not ready to explore their offerings just yet.

Subscription as an Audition

Trust me when I say there are enough newsletters on the internet for you to find people covering what you wish to deep-dive into.

After finding the newsletters which cover the topics I wish to explore, I either sample them by visiting the previous weeks’ newsletter on the website or subscribe to the newsletter if previous editions are not available.

It is then that I consider the newsletter for an audition to fill the nugget of wisdom I seek from it. After that, it comes down to two options for the newsletters that reach my inbox:

- I don’t like the newsletter at all: Unsubscribe

- I like the newsletter but don’t have the bandwidth/prioritization for this content right now: Block the sender

E-mails from the senders you have blocked show up in the Spam folder. Thus, it is easy to access them within 30 days of receipt before the Spam folder auto-deletes the E-mail.

Another benefit of blocking instead of unsubscribing the newsletter is that you can see the list of names you have blocked and unblock them easily when you wish to start receiving those E-mails in your inbox again.

Managing Your Inbox

At this stage, I am receiving the newsletters on the topics I wish to learn more about from the creators I feel are adding value to my journey.

Will my inbox not be cluttered from these multiple, frequent newsletters? Will I be at risk of missing out on other important E-mails as a result? Yes!

To mitigate these issues and also help me better decide which newsletter to read when I created the below 3 folders in my E-mail:

Short Mails: Newsletters with under 4 minute reading time. Easy to read on the go and archive.

Mid-Length Mails: Newsletters with 4 to 10 minutes of reading time. Best to read during a short break and archive.

Long Mails: Newsletters with greater than 10 minutes of reading time. Can read over the weekend/per convenience.

This method has allowed me to cover all the newsletters hitting my inbox at my pace, in a decluttered and exhaustive manner.

While there are apps such as Stoop which present your newsletters to you in a newsfeed fashion, I feel I have better control of the content I consume by creating folders in my inbox itself. Who needs another app anyway?