How FAT is your email inbox?
Posted on September 12, 2007 | 6 comments | Filed in UncategorizedIt’s been a busy summer. One of those where you just kind of surf at the top of your most urgent emails and the rest sinks to the bottom of the black inbox sea. And today I had it. My urgent email box was up to 476 emails. Geez Louse that’s bad. So, today for peace of mind I was determined to dig thru there and clean that sucker out. I am very proud to be down to 257 emails now.
Am I bad?
I even hire my husband to dig thru the 1500 or so emails I get a day from all my websites to send me the urgent stuff. So I only have the important stuff in my box.
Seriously, how fat is your email inbox? Is it busting at the seams? How many emails are sitting in your inbox right now?
I want to see if I am the only guilt one out there.
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6 Responses to “How FAT is your email inbox?”
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480 in all. 118 unread. HELP!!!
When I saw the title of your post in my email – I opened it desperately, hoping you’d have all of the answers for me!! Haha!
Oh me, oh my!
I’ve got to get this back under control.
Hey Kristi – what is the oldest email you have saved in folders? I have some from 2003. LOL!
I’m drowning in email too. I have 810 in my inbox right now. I used to have Compuserve and they automatically deleted anything over a month old. I ended up canceling Compuserve recently, but I’m trying to get rid of anything over a month old on my own. It’s not working!
The only way I have been able to discipline myself regarding email is to not allow myself to go to bed until I have gotten my emails to below 30.
This is how I do it (I use Outlook):
1. Move any “to-do emails” to my task list with a date and time and a copy of the email (using Insert Item), or my calendar, also with the copy of the email attached to the appointment (using the Insert Item)
2. Scan newsletters/blogs etc for useful links, open the webpages and then save them using a tool called Web Research Pro by Macropool (costs about $40 and allows me to categorize, “file” and then later search for any web page I have kept). It’s like a Paper Tiger for webpages. I then dump the email.
3. Quickly dictate my more wordy responses using Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred, version 9, as I am a slow and lousy typist
4. Move emails to a named folder with a “follow-up” flag that is dated and timed for the anticipated follow up date. I have MANY folders (and they are all searchable if I need to find a “lost” email.
5. Use SpamBayes (http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/) as a spam filter added into Outlook. It is great for detecting spam, but often picks up stuff that is not spam, so you have to train it by clicking on the “Delete as spam” button in the Inbox, or “Recover from spam” in the Junk mail.
6. Toss, toss, toss anything that is not related to clients, prospects and possible business.
Right now it is 9:14 PM and I have 27 emails in my box, so I am allowed to go to bed
My inbox used to be like that. But… I was recently audited (financial planners are routinely audited by the SEC or the state they do business in – keeps us honest
). Anyway, I had to get organized before the audit, so I setup separate email folders for different things, like Read: Personal, Read: Business, Client Emails, etc. You get the idea. Also, I started cleaning out my inbox AT LEAST once a week. Every day is better, but I don’t remember to do it every day. But these two small changes to my email habits have made a tremendous difference!
Ha!
I have quite a lot in my email box. ometimes it takes me 10min to sift through 645 emails and find the most important ones. So you are not the only one. What I find hard is actually finding time to just sit htere and read emails.
Let’s try approximately 6,000 in my inbox, but they are ones I want to keep. Have started creating folders. Maybe by this time next year I’ll have it organized lol.