Step 1: Stop Wanting Things.

via Pinterest

So part of what I do for a living is plan email campaigns - content wise and audience wise. Audience selection is possibly the most complex thing I do. I pull back millions and millions of points of prior customer behavior and use it to try and predict who would be most receptive to buy or do something. In short - I send spam mail professionally. And I'm very good at it. Companies have boiled this down to a science. And it works.

I love a good promotional email. Of course, since I find inspiration from them, in a strategic business sense. But it hits a little too close to home, and I found that the advertising worked a little too well, too frequently.

So of course, I'm unsubscribing to all my retail promo emails. Goodbye Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, Nordstrom, Aritzia, HauteLook, J.Crew, Everlane...  Yes, you too Everlane - even though I love getting your emails. I think this will be a good step toward me organically spotting wardrobe gaps, and searching on my own to fill them - instead of retailers creating gaps for me, and then filling the gap they just created.

On a very similar note - when I worked at the advertising agency, one of my accounts was McDonald's. I was constantly surrounded by everything McDonald's. I didn't eat it frequently, so I was really unfamiliar with the data I'd be working with. So I printed out their entire menu board and put it up in my cube for easy reference. I ate more McDonalds during that time period than I ever did in my entire life leading up to that point.