Vacation is over and I am back. Thanks to Jayne, Russ and Renee for keeping the cooler cool while I was at the water park, Disneyland, the beach, California Adventure, and then back at the beach. And while I didn’t bring anyone back a t-shirt, I did come back with a bit of wisdom.

The power of the delete button is liberating and has the ability to promote world peace. Okay, it can’t promote world peace, but it can make my professional life a bit less stressful, adds lightness to my in-box, and allows me to put aside our differences and focus on our common challenges and goals.

As I was being lightly roasted over on the LMA Listserv last week my first reaction was to hit the reply button and jump right in there. But I thought better of it and just deleted the post from my in-box. What use would it be to contribute to a discussion that really just needed to be put to rest? What would it say to those who have their eyes on me wondering what I would do? Should I take the high road and ignore it? It was difficult to hit the “cancel” button on my response, but it was the right thing to do.

So I began to run with the idea of the power of the delete button. I deleted all of the e-newsletters I get without reading them (it would all be old news by the time I got back to the office). I deleted the blog posts without following the links to the full articles. I then unsubscribed to all of the newsletters that I never NEED to read, but somehow seem to clutter my in-box on a daily basis.

Most importantly, as we enter a polarized political season, when colleagues are already publishing their personal opinions and political commentary on Facebook and Twitter that might not be shared by their readers – who happen to include their clients, referral sources, potential employers and colleagues – I have my delete finger well trained and ready to go.