I lost access to my main Gmail account after sending two important emails and then wasn’t able to login again.
As I was tired last Friday I wanted to do something that wouldn’t take me a lot of time and effort, but would also let me save up time in the future.
I wanted to use CleanFox to unsubscribe from many mailing lists that I have subscribed to. To do that, I had to generate a specific password for this application, which is a requirement from the security policies from Gmail.
I do not remember the exact steps, but I know that I had to reset my password and after setting up the 2 step authentication mechanism with 8-digit codes that can be used only once, I carelessly proceeded in the next steps without saving those codes.
Then I was left with no such code that could help me sign in. I tried to reset my password again using another recovery email for many times, but I couldn’t do it.
I was stuck. I sent many email recovery requests, but they were only expected to be considered within the next the 3-5 business days. As it was a Friday afternoon, it meant that most likely, many email recovery requests that I sent to the Gmail team would only be considered later on.
On Wednesday, I got an email in my email recovery account that the 2-step authentication step has been removed, and I could now sign in using only my password.
What also helped during this time was that I was trying to login at the usual location as before, using the same devices, which can mitigate the suspicious that someone unauthorized is trying to break into somebody else’s account.
The main message here is that: I did not have access to my email account for 5 days. Yes, 5 days and you know what?
The world did not end. There was no urgent message waiting for my immediate attention or response. I wasn’t that much important after all.
I still had days and nights.
The world did not end its process of spinning around the sun.
This was a really insightful realization and a wake-up call that I am wasting so much time doing just small check-ins instead of simply scheduling email check-ins only once or twice a day.
Of course there can be days when I am waiting for an important email, which can simply be an occasion that I can turn on notifications in my phone, or use a helpful Chrome extension to notify me. I use many filters to put the majority of the emails that I get in many categories, so that I can process and deal with at a much more efficient pace.
I need to confess though that I did miss signing in some applications or pages, such as Trello or Udemy, where I use my Gmail account to login, but still, it wasn’t a big deal after all.
I could still use a pen and paper to organize my work. I also had many other courses in my computer that I could still access and learn from.
