# Delete things

> Being neat !== being a digital hoarder.

Just because I advocate for neatness doesn't mean I think you should keep everything forever.

I'm just reconfiguring my mailing list and came across this screen in the excellent (and [FOSS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software)) [Listmonk](https://listmonk.app) mailing list software.

<JDImage
  folder="blog"
  src="0138A-Listmonk--light-2138x874.png"
  alt="A screenshot of Listmonk's 'templates'. It's a web console thing. There are 5 templates and I don't know what 4 of them are."
  width={1069}
  height={437}
/>

These are the templates that you use when you send an outbound email. I tinkered with this back in July and I know that I _always_ want to use _one_ of these templates.

Hmm. But which one was it?

## Less choice is less friction

It's a common theme around here: less choice is to be embraced. Design _fewer_ areas and categories, not more.

> Is this the first time I've mentioned Barry Schwartz' [Paradox of Choice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6XEQIsCoM)?! It can't be but it seems so. That link was the TED talk; it's also [a book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice) and is worth a read.

This isn't quite the paradox of choice, but the idea is the same: why have all of these choices? Are they good? Helpful? No! In this case they're just confusing. I don't remember which one I want. They slow me down.

I think we keep things around just in case. _What if_ I wanted to use one of these templates later? Is there some setting in there that I couldn't recreate? Something I might look at and learn from?

Eh, there might be. But probably not. Life would be better – a tiny bit, but surely – if I deleted the four templates I didn't use. So I just did.