Every January, I hit the ground with a sense of renewal and the same promises; a clean inbox, getting back to people right away, staying on top of things. Within a week or so, I'm back where I started. But the problem isn't willpower, it's that the maintenance is a task in itself.

Take my inbox. After making the effort to clear it out, I'm buried again within days, mostly thanks to marketing junk. The only real fix is to open each email and unsubscribe one by one. That would take forever.

Then it occurred to me. With one prompt, I could keep my inbox clean for good.

How did I do it?

I asked Instruct to pull all the marketing emails I'd received and list the senders. It found 61 contacts, complete with unsubscribe links already extracted. I picked the ones worth keeping, hit go on the rest, and just like that, no more spam.

The fresh start stuck because I didn't just clean up. I removed the thing that was making the mess.

In a time where so much of work is just tedious maintenance, I'm glad to be working on a product that's trying to give time back, and keep the slate clean once and for all.