How many emails in your inbox?
26 05 2007
Bob beat me to it … I was planning on posting about emails in my inbox, and Bob got there first. Darn it!
Oh well, I still want to brag a bit: Thursday morning, I had 165 emails in my inbox. The number had been gradually creeping up over the last year or so: around 40 last summer, to about 60 towards the end of last year, upto about 100 for most of this year, but upto 165 this week. I was getting lost; emails not answered or forgotten about in the mass of nagging mails that remained in my inbox. I felt a bit better when I discovered a friend had over 3000 emails in his inbox! But it still didn’t help my huge inbox.
So action was required. I was meant to be doing an essay or two (which was probably an incentive to ANYTHING else!), and so I was ruthless. Some deleted, some moved to other folders, some added to a talk list (which has grown considerably!).
I have been trying to use a system for emails (but failing miserably):
- If I can action an email in 2 minutes, do so immediately
- If waiting for a response, put into “WaitingFor” folder
- If actioned and dealt with, file in “Reference” folder
- If can’t action in 2 minutes, add to task list, and put in “SomeDay” folder
Trouble is “SomeDay” never happened, “WaitingFor” got so many emails in I couldn’t keep track of, and curiosity killed the cat and I opened emails without having time to action any of them.
And so 165 (all crucial of course) ended up in my inbox on Thursday morning, and goodness knows how many in “SomeDay” and “WaitingFor”.
But now I have 3! Two require a bit of thought before responding, and one has about 20 attachments that I need to open and file, and I just ran out of inclination. Can I keep it down? We’ll see, but at least I am not fighting a losing battle any more.
So how many emails do you have in your inbox?
Wow, I have like 5 on my personal, 5 at work, and probably 15 in my junk address, which I delete every day after I glean what I might want to read.
I keep everything out as much as possible, responding and deleting as much as I can.
So if you add my three accounts together (not including our ministry account which Makeesha does a good job of keeping up with) I have…20.
hehe
2. Both read and just being kept for info.
15 unread emails, a combination of bulk emails from mailing lists that I haven’t found the time to digest, and a few personal ones that are marked unread so that I notice them and reply to them (I have read them once).
I can read email on my mobile phone, so that really helps as I check mail whilst sitting on the train.
I do keep up with my email, but then my wife complains I spend too much time on the PC. I can’t win…
At this moment, i use 5 email accounts.
The active one has twelve in the inbox, waiting for list has 41 (time to check in with people not responding), the “to read / info” has 47, and pending has nearly 10.
Another is the spam account, has over 3000. I usually, once a month go thru and delete. It’s truly a junk account, but use it for myspace
Two others are little used, so there is nothing in those.
The final one is the one that I use for newsgroups that i read, ebay stuff, freecycle, and the like — that still has nearly 1000 to sort thru. Most is pre-sorted into folders per newsgroup. Most times i don’t read them all, just do bulk delete, other times I read some of the conversations.
Writing this out, I just noticed that perhaps i have too much information.
Maybe not that helpful right now but something to look out for. Mail in Apple’s new operating system Leopard will let you turn e-mail right into to-dos (with dates and everything). It’s a cool feature but will of course just move the problem somewhere else. Then you’ll need to stay on top of your to-do list.
Hey everyone - thanks for the comments.
I wonder if anyone is going to post a comment saying I have LOADS of emails in their main inbox? Or if it is just going to be the organised / administrative ones who will post?
I am not sure i would have posted if was still stuck at 165 instead of 3 (still 3 as of Sunday evening!).
Thanks for tips everyone … Chris i especially love the idea of all the mass mailings going to separate folders … what a great idea! I might have to set that up…
And Alastair … i know what you mean!
no comment
lol
i kinda work on a mass response system - read stuff on the way in, respond immedietely if its urgent if not file it or leave it sitting in the in box and have a replying session
That’s been my strategy too Paul … and i ended up with 165. Do you more than that
I am now down to 2 … but am being a bit driven about deleting / replying / filing.
My administrative wife (who has always kept her inbox down to 0, just thinks it is so funny!
[...] week was bit manic, so not much blogging going on. I have kept my emails down to 2 though! And have been finishing some counselling essays (and I thought I wouldn’t be doing any more [...]
you know i lurk, so here i am…albeit a delayed response to an old thread that does not require my opinion…
i thought you might be interested and surprised to learn that i have 141 in home inbox and well over 200 in work. being ‘organised’ does not mean filtering emails in my world.
Hi Rupert,
Probably the people with 500 emails in their inboxes will also be the people who either don’t get round to reading your blog, or use Paul’s “mass response system” … so here’s me reading it three weeks later!
Seriously, in all my time in a big UK company and then several smaller outfits abroad, I have never had any training in handling or filing email. In the UK, our excellent paper files on different issues stopped around ‘95, after which they disintegrated into a myriad of attachments in different peoples’ email systems. One issue is keeping your inbox empty in a way that suits you … but the other is where you put it then … creating a system so you personally can find that article a friend sent you on potting begonias last year … and beyond the individual, to create a corporate memory in a team like the CCE office. In that respect, email tends not to encourage community - we all prefer to store our own.
Neil
PS I couldn’t think of a different team illustration, so I must add that I have no knowledge of the office filing and assume it to be brilliant!
My inbox may be lower, but it doesn’t mean i always get round to replying to comments quickly! So sorry for the slow reply!!!!!
I really agree about the system … since reducing my inbox, the number of tasks has increased, and so has the number of reminders! But i tend to ignore them when they get too many and that rather defeeats the object!!!