E-mail Overload: Digging out from Under
Well, I spent two or three hours this afternoon sorting through my e-mail inbox at work. It had somehow swollen to 678 (!) messages. I used to be in the habit of sorting out my inbox – filing, deleting, and and trimming things back down – every Friday (at worst), but I’ve recently let that slip. When combined with my apparent inability to delete even the simplest, most inane messages, it got ugly. And fast. I’m not done yet… I’ve still got about 50 messages left to handle, but it’s now back down to a manageable level. If I can find a few spare minutes this weekend, I’ll be back on top. While I was at it, I also got myself off of a few extraneous mailing lists. This won’t completely stem the tide, but it should at least slow things down just a bit.
Disclaimer: Discover is a paid advertiser of this site.
Reasonable efforts are made to maintain accurate information. See the Discover online credit card application for full terms and conditions on offers and rewards.
Modified on January 4th, 2006 - 2 Comments
Filed under: Productivity
About the author: Nickel is the founder and editor-in-chief of this site. He's a thirty-something family man who has been writing about personal finance since 2005, and guess what? He's on Twitter!
Related articles...
» Eight Random Things About Me» One Year Ago This Week – In the Beginning
» E-mail Santa
» Full-Text RSS Feed Problems Solved
» Online Bank Contact and Routing Information
» Penalty for Paying Quarterly Estimated Tax Payments Late
» Citi Dividend Platinum Select Card Conversions?
» Bank of America Adds Mobile Check Deposit
Was this article useful? Please sign up to receive our content via e-mail:
2 Responses to “E-mail Overload: Digging out from Under”
Leave a Reply
Top Cards by Category
The new Discover it card is out to change the way people think about credit cards. No annual fee. No overlimit fee. No foreign transaction fee & no pay-by-phone fee. No late fee on your first late payment. And Discover won't increase your APR for paying late.*
Bonus Miles: Earn 30,000 bonus miles toward Award Travel after you spend $500 on the Card within the first three months of Cardmembership. Earn As You Spend: Get 2X miles on Delta purchases and 1X miles for all other eligible dollars spent.
The new Discover it card is out to change the way people think about credit cards. No annual fee. No overlimit fee. No foreign transaction fee & no pay-by-phone fee. No late fee on your first late payment. And Discover won't increase your APR for paying late.*
The new Discover it card is out to change the way people think about credit cards. No annual fee. No overlimit fee. No foreign transaction fee & no pay-by-phone fee. No late fee on your first late payment. And Discover won't increase your APR for paying late.*
The new Discover it card is out to change the way people think about credit cards. No annual fee. No overlimit fee. No foreign transaction fee & no pay-by-phone fee. No late fee on your first late payment. And Discover won't increase your APR for paying late.*
The new Discover it card is out to change the way people think about credit cards. No annual fee. No overlimit fee. No foreign transaction fee & no pay-by-phone fee. No late fee on your first late payment. And Discover won't increase your APR for paying late.*
Treat yourself to the gold standard of The Business Gold Rewards Card(R) from American Express OPEN which includes $0 introductory annual fee for the first year, then $175. This charge card can supercharge the way your business earns rewards with three times points on airfare purchased from airlines, two times points on purchases at US gas stations up to $100,000 in each category per year, then 1 point. Terms and limitations apply.
The new Discover it card is out to change the way people think about credit cards. No annual fee. No overlimit fee. No foreign transaction fee & no pay-by-phone fee. No late fee on your first late payment. And Discover won't increase your APR for paying late.*
- How to Become a Millionaire
- How to Get Out of Debt
- The Best Dollars I've Ever Spent
- How Our Estate Plan is Structured
- How We Paid Our Mortgage In Less than 10 Years
- Money Making Ideas
- How to Manage Your Asset Allocation with Multiple Accounts
- Consumption Smoothing - Save While the Saving's Good
- How to Save on Groceries
- How Much Life Insurance Do You Need?
- Eleven Great Books About Money
- Dave Ramsey is Bad at Math
- Dish Network Customer Service SUCKS
- $8,000 Homebuyer Tax Credit
- Pay Off Mortgage Early or Invest?
- How to Claim the First-Time Homebuyer Tax Credit
- Termite Control: Sentricon vs. Termidor
- How Much Should You Pay a Babysitter?
- Reduced Credit Limits? Share Your Experience
- Ethanol Blended Gas = Lower Mileage?
- $15,000 Homebuyer Tax Credit
- Buying Furniture off the Back of a Truck
- Will Mac OS X Lion Kill Quicken 2007?
How to save money on insurance
- Can you afford an international retirement living?
- How to help your family after you are gone
- Will Social Security be gone before I retire?
- Refund, or no refund?
- This battle of the sexes has no winner
- What to look for when buying an energy-efficient home
- The hidden savings in a rent payment
- How to save money on vacations using social media and new technologies
- How to budget without regular paychecks
- What do you do with your windfalls?
May 28th, 2005 at 5:53 am
I have two rules.
First, any message that comes from a mailing list I subscribed to goes into a seperate box for that list. That way, I can ignore list mail until I have a long stretch of time (such as a vacation) to go through it, without running the risk of missing something personal. Also, it means that any message which does land in my inbox is either personally directed to me by someone I know (and easily identifiable as such, if I sort by sender) or else it’s spam that squeaked through my filters.
Second, every time I look at email, I do not consider the job done until the inbox is _empty_. (This would, of course, be impossible if not for spam filtering and Rule 1, but it’s the only way to avoid falling behind.) Messages which I want to save go elsewhere. Messages I want to read but don’t have time at the moment go elsewhere. If I don’t have time to handle it all, the email goes through a pretty ruthless triage process, but one way or another the inbox must be empty before anything short of the building being on fire will get me out of the chair.
Sure, sometimes it takes me a few days to get to the “read as soon as I get a chance” folder, and that backlogs a bit. But at least I’m absolutely sure I’ll never miss out on something urgent because of an overwhelming backlog in my inbox, the way several of my friends have.
May 28th, 2005 at 2:18 pm
Matt: That sounds like a good system. My main problem is that I have a hard time keeping track of things if stuff doesn’t initially land in my inbox. Just a state of mind more than anything, but I lose track of things if they don’t stare me in the face at least once. The problem is that this approach requires a lot of discipline, as things can build up very quickly. I really do need to experiment with filtering things off to other boxes form the beginning. Thanks for your feedback.