I don’t know if all of you caught my latest aside, whining about the state of my inbox. It’s frequently above the 100-150 mark these days and I can’t seem to get it down. Every e-mail is read, just waiting for a response. Some are even that old they’re labelled as 2007.
About a month ago, I managed to get it down to about 35, but within days it was back up over 100. The difference between now and then was of course the lack of Internet. I had no Internet connection so to fill my time I responded to as many e-mails as I could. I also worked on my long overdue scripts, but that’s another story.
Of course, I don’t have as many e-mails as Robert Scoble — who just this week blogged about his inbox — and I don’t use Twitter, Flickr, Facebook etc, but the concept he talks about is exactly the same. Get rid of the distractions and productivity seems to increase tenfold.
I’ve decided that I’m going to set myself the goal of disconnecting my wireless every day for 30 minutes with the specific intention of emptying my inbox. It’s probably an empty challenge and I’ll get bored within about 3 days, but I’m about willing to try anything.
12 Apr at 1:29 pm
Good idea :3 It’s better than deleting them all!
12 Apr at 1:32 pm
Good luck! I’m sure you’ll manage it. I don’t really have the same problem as you in that I get millions of emails, but I do have other things that need to be done and I get distracted easily. I try to multi-task too much and instead of doing 1 job completely properly, I do about 5 jobs slightly-less-than perfect.
12 Apr at 3:01 pm
This is probably ignorant of me, but how do you respond to emails if you have no Internet connection?
12 Apr at 5:12 pm
You need a P.A!
12 Apr at 5:58 pm
I’m really anal about my email and if I have more than half a dozen messages there, I start to hyperventilate. :p Consequently, I take 30mins-1hr at the end of each day to work through my messages (which is why I reply so quickly usually!) and aim to have NOTHING awaiting a response on a Sunday evening, meaning even the more complicated replies are actioned within a week. It’s bordering OCD, I know, but it means my inbox is usually pretty clear and I feel very zen about it all!
My work Inbox (where I have 50+ messages a day too) is frighteningly clean, too. ICT are slightly scared of me, I think!!
V xx
12 Apr at 7:28 pm
Good luck with that goal, I hope you succeed but with the amount of emails you’re getting every day I doubt 30 minutes will be enough to work through them all ;) .
12 Apr at 8:19 pm
@Sarah: Thunderbird has a ‘send later’ thingymabob, where you can compose and save your emails then send them when you connect at a later date. I did it a lot when we were without a connection after we moved.
12 Apr at 8:51 pm
You can do it, Jem! I’m sure if you put your mind to it you can succeed. ;) But are you sure 30 minutes will be enough time to respond to enough emails?
12 Apr at 9:14 pm
Good luck with your goal there! My inbox can get pretty crazy too. Nowhere near 1,000 emails, but still a whole bunch. Of course, I have a few different email accounts too which can be confusing. I’ve been hearing a lot about Thunderbird lately it seems like. Maybe I need to check into that myself.
By the way, I haven’t commented here in awhile and needed to add in here that I can’t believe you switched back to WordPress. I was pretty stunned when I read that. I like seeing the gravatars in your comments. :D
12 Apr at 11:20 pm
This comment is going to be COMPLETELY off topic Jem lol… but how is the Litter Kwitter?
13 Apr at 2:13 am
Hopefully you’ll stick to your plan. Although, it could be worse. My mom’s inbox used to be so crowded that for about 4 months she had an average of about 1 400 e-mails. She kept answering and they kept coming in.
13 Apr at 5:03 am
Send half of those emails to me, I never get anything. Hmm… nah I don’t want them. Good luck in your email deleting spree ;)
13 Apr at 8:21 am
You want to ditch the distractions and you’re getting Mario Kart for the Wii? Man, good luck!
13 Apr at 10:32 am
Don’t you need the internet to read/answer e-mails?
Good luck on getting them down, there’s one in there from me, lol.
Enjoy. x
13 Apr at 10:34 am
Oops, I just read your comment to Sarah, that’s a really cool idea.
13 Apr at 11:01 am
All I can think of is Bruce Almighty. Just hit ‘Reply All’ saying “Yes. Sounds good!”.
13 Apr at 5:52 pm
LOL @ Paddy.
I have nowhere near as many e-mails, still some get put off for eons, because I’m just too lazy to think of an answer that requires more than 2 seconds’ thinking.
13 Apr at 6:26 pm
I don’t know how in the world you manage that many emails. I would go crazy. I only get about 50 a day and that is too many for me, lol. Geesh, you have a lot of friends. Now I know why I try to rarely email you, lol.
13 Apr at 8:54 pm
Wow, that makes me grateful that most of the emails I get day in and day out are notifications from WordPress letting me know a new comment has been added to the moderation queue on my site (or that someone posted a new comment). Good luck with your goal, hopefully you can stick with it.
13 Apr at 10:42 pm
wow! good luck with that. why dont they just comment?
13 Apr at 11:55 pm
Wow, that’a a lot of e-mails! I barely ever get important mails so I just have to delete all the spam and wp notifications, thank god for that.
14 Apr at 4:18 am
Quite true about the distractions. I need to slim down my social profiles…I realized I open accounts just to have them. Blah.
Good luck on your inbox! :D
14 Apr at 5:17 am
I only get a dozen or so every week that I actually have to sit down and respond to, but I still find myself stalling and taking almost an entire week to generate a real response. I don’t know why I find it so difficult. I sit here bored half the time!
14 Apr at 2:47 pm
I get a lot of e-mails, too…but most of it is spam or things not worth reading. When it comes to things I actually need to read and respond to, I only have about 10-20 a week. Good luck getting through all that stuff!
15 Apr at 8:26 am
I get a lot of emails a day as well. Sometimes its a pain to go though them but I don’t work near a computer. so the time I do get to be on the computer is before/after work.. (bleh)
But I do like his rant though…
I try and clean out my inbox at least once a month..
15 Apr at 1:25 pm
Sounds like a good idea. As Vixx says, I always set aside 30-45mins a day at work to work through all my emails (although I find doing it at the start of the day easier). The same is true with my personal emails/ letters – I get through as many as I can in twenty minutes each evening and then leave it until the next day. I don’t get as many messages as you do, so you may have to spend a bit more time during each go, but it works.
15 Apr at 3:06 pm
I recently cleared out my inbox and similarly found emails that I’d flagged for reply from Sept! I’m terrible.
17 Apr at 4:26 pm
http://lifehacker.com/380044/top-10-email-productivity-boosters
Maybe that could help you?