Unsubscribe from the Sales

You do not choose what to buy — you are shown what to want, a few dozen times a day on average. A discount on something you do not need is not a saving, it is a cost.

Open your inbox and search for the words «sale», «rea», «rabatt», «discount», «-20%», «today only». Open each email and click the unsubscribe link at the bottom — do not delete, unsubscribe, otherwise another one arrives tomorrow. Make a rule for today: no deleting an email without unsubscribing first. Then take your phone and go through the shop and delivery apps switching off offer notifications; inside the apps there is also an «offers and news» toggle, turn that off too. Finish by unfollowing two social accounts that show you things: not friends, but shops and review bloggers.

In two or three days the inbox goes quiet, and the first feeling is strange — close to boredom: the stream of small prompts to go and look disappears. That silence is exactly where your own «I want» comes back. Unsubscribing will not work first time for some senders; shops restart the list after any purchase — walk the same list again in a month. If unsubscribing failed (the button leads to an account login, the password is gone), mark the message as spam instead: after a few such marks, mail services stop letting them through.