Declaring email bankruptcy
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Alternative title: making good use of my insomnia
I’m quite proud of this picture:
In particular, see that little number showing my unread emails? A week ago it was in the thousands.
I chose a date and marked as read everything before it. Then isolated a month worth of unread emails at a time (Gmail has great tools for this) and did a first pass of individual deletions and then opened the few that remained. Doing it in bite sized chunks like this made it much more manageable and less intimidating to even start.
I finished this morning.
My theory, which will start to be tested immediately, is I’ll be much better at clearing it daily. Sort of like broken windows theory but for email.
(By the way the number of unread is now at zero but I thought a really small number would be better to illustrate this)
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I currently have 7 in my personal email, and maybe 20 in my work in-box. I cannot stand email getting out of hand, it gives me serious anxiety, so I'm ruthless in getting rid of it. I tell colleagues if that if they cc me rather send it directly, I delete without reading. It doesn't stop them doing it, but it means I'm not obligated to read any of their crap.
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I read, quite some time ago, that some early computer tech luminary dispensing productivity advice telling people they should take care of all their emails everyday, and that ideally email inboxes should be cleared daily.
That's before Gmail, and certainly before junk mail. Heck, that's when people only get email at work, before email for personal use is common.
