What's in your email inbox?
October 26, 2024 1:46 PM Subscribe
I often see people refer to the dozens or hundreds of messages in their email inboxex, but I never have more than 20 or so. People with overstuffed inboxes, what's in them?
I currently have 14 messages in my email inbox. Several of them are waiting to be processed: they have an attachment that needs to be saved in a particular place, say. Others contain zoom links for ongoing courses or lecture series I'm participating in, and will be deleted when the series ends. One contains a return code for a pair of shoes that didn't fit right.
This is a pretty typical mix for me, and I could clear it down to nothing if I spent twenty minutes to half an hour on it.
I am on mailing lists for things like clothing companies I buy from pretty often, Amtrak deals, a few Substack/Medium/Ghost newsletters and the like, but I tend to move them out of the inbox pretty quickly.
I have a similar amount in my work email account. The heaviest load there is newsletters from the various departments in the community college I work at, and I either glance at the headlines and then trash them, or just trash them, knowing that another will come soon enough.
What piles up in the email boxes of people who end up with dozens or hundreds of emails? My tendency to be email-tidy seems like it might be very similar to the difference between people who clean out the fridge every week before they go grocery shopping, and the ones who do it every six months, which is to say, maybe people have the same kinds of things I have, but let them pile up instead of clearing them out every day. But maybe people are getting interesting and cool things that I'm not getting?
I'm not being at all judgmental. I just literally don't understand how inboxes get that stuffed. Explain it to me.
I currently have 14 messages in my email inbox. Several of them are waiting to be processed: they have an attachment that needs to be saved in a particular place, say. Others contain zoom links for ongoing courses or lecture series I'm participating in, and will be deleted when the series ends. One contains a return code for a pair of shoes that didn't fit right.
This is a pretty typical mix for me, and I could clear it down to nothing if I spent twenty minutes to half an hour on it.
I am on mailing lists for things like clothing companies I buy from pretty often, Amtrak deals, a few Substack/Medium/Ghost newsletters and the like, but I tend to move them out of the inbox pretty quickly.
I have a similar amount in my work email account. The heaviest load there is newsletters from the various departments in the community college I work at, and I either glance at the headlines and then trash them, or just trash them, knowing that another will come soon enough.
What piles up in the email boxes of people who end up with dozens or hundreds of emails? My tendency to be email-tidy seems like it might be very similar to the difference between people who clean out the fridge every week before they go grocery shopping, and the ones who do it every six months, which is to say, maybe people have the same kinds of things I have, but let them pile up instead of clearing them out every day. But maybe people are getting interesting and cool things that I'm not getting?
I'm not being at all judgmental. I just literally don't understand how inboxes get that stuffed. Explain it to me.
For me, in general, if an email has been read, it might as well not exist for me. So I read my unread messages, and if it's urgent it gets an immediate reply or action, if it needs a reply or action but I'm not ready to do it I mark it as unread manually or set a reminder to get back to it, and if there's anything that I want to refer back to quickly, it also gets a star. I also have filters set up to move messages out of my inbox for things I know I don't care about as much (like mailing lists or w/e), which helps keep things more manageable. Because of this, very few emails actually land in my inbox proper in the first place.
Mail is never deleted. If I do anything with it, it is to archive it (which I may or may not do), reply to it, star it, or mark it as junk. Sorting is something that happens automatically with a filter or not at all.
posted by Aleyn at 2:07 PM on October 26 [1 favorite]
Mail is never deleted. If I do anything with it, it is to archive it (which I may or may not do), reply to it, star it, or mark it as junk. Sorting is something that happens automatically with a filter or not at all.
posted by Aleyn at 2:07 PM on October 26 [1 favorite]
Whenever I get email, I just leave it in my inbox.
Newsletters? Leave it in my inbox. Store promotions? Leave it in my inbox.
There are 19,000 unread messages in my inbox and I don't care that much until I start running out of space.
posted by Jeanne at 2:08 PM on October 26 [34 favorites]
Newsletters? Leave it in my inbox. Store promotions? Leave it in my inbox.
There are 19,000 unread messages in my inbox and I don't care that much until I start running out of space.
posted by Jeanne at 2:08 PM on October 26 [34 favorites]
I don’t move anything out of my inbox because there’s no reason to. I turned off my inbox count on my phone because I don’t care. I search when I need something, and I use automatic tagging, and I get no utility from organizing it further.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 2:11 PM on October 26 [12 favorites]
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 2:11 PM on October 26 [12 favorites]
I have nearly 2000 unread messages. No idea what's in them because I haven't read them, but apparently the McDonald's app reads emails, so they probably know. Seriously, it's newsletters, ads, and receipts.
I will clear it out at some point because Google keeps threatening that I'm running out of space, but it's not urgent.
posted by betweenthebars at 2:13 PM on October 26
I will clear it out at some point because Google keeps threatening that I'm running out of space, but it's not urgent.
posted by betweenthebars at 2:13 PM on October 26
In other words, email is nothing like the fridge because if you leave stuff in it it doesn’t smell or fill a subfolder with fetid liquid that must be dealt with.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 2:13 PM on October 26 [7 favorites]
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 2:13 PM on October 26 [7 favorites]
Response by poster: Gotcha!
I archive a lot of things if I think I might need them someday, however remote the possibility, but don't need them right away. I think my "archive" is probably like a lot of people's inboxes. I never go in there and clean out things that no longer have any use, just use the search feature to find things when a need comes up.
posted by Well I never at 2:21 PM on October 26 [3 favorites]
I archive a lot of things if I think I might need them someday, however remote the possibility, but don't need them right away. I think my "archive" is probably like a lot of people's inboxes. I never go in there and clean out things that no longer have any use, just use the search feature to find things when a need comes up.
posted by Well I never at 2:21 PM on October 26 [3 favorites]
I always have tens of thousands of emails in my inbox. It’s where I keep all the emails I get. Search has never let me down when needing to find something again.
I’m baffled by the idea of wasting time moving them out of the inbox into separate folders. Loads of my emails could be filed under several different things, and what an absolute ballache it would be trying to find them again.
This goes for both personal and work email accounts. I left my last job earlier this year after 12 years in post, and I can’t quite remember how many I had but it was certainly 40,000+.
posted by penguin pie at 2:23 PM on October 26 [4 favorites]
I’m baffled by the idea of wasting time moving them out of the inbox into separate folders. Loads of my emails could be filed under several different things, and what an absolute ballache it would be trying to find them again.
This goes for both personal and work email accounts. I left my last job earlier this year after 12 years in post, and I can’t quite remember how many I had but it was certainly 40,000+.
posted by penguin pie at 2:23 PM on October 26 [4 favorites]
I've occasionally toyed with the idea of sorting out my emails and doing a weekly clean-up, but with three different inboxes (work, home, hobby) and 30K+ emails between them, it's going to be a long, boring task, so I never actually do it.
Filters take care of a lot of stuff (logs from automated tasks at work, support tickets, and a few other things I get a lot of). I never leave an email unread though - just doing that minimum makes it feel like I have my work life under some sort of control. I occasionally sort an inbox by sender or subject so I can mass-delete newsletters and the like.
My father-in-law does that thing where he deletes every email after reading and retrieves them from the Trash when he needs them, then gets upset when he loses a load of important stuff.
I'm sure there are email Marie Kondos out there hawking their ultimate email filing system.
posted by pipeski at 2:28 PM on October 26
Filters take care of a lot of stuff (logs from automated tasks at work, support tickets, and a few other things I get a lot of). I never leave an email unread though - just doing that minimum makes it feel like I have my work life under some sort of control. I occasionally sort an inbox by sender or subject so I can mass-delete newsletters and the like.
My father-in-law does that thing where he deletes every email after reading and retrieves them from the Trash when he needs them, then gets upset when he loses a load of important stuff.
I'm sure there are email Marie Kondos out there hawking their ultimate email filing system.
posted by pipeski at 2:28 PM on October 26
I tend to move them out of the inbox pretty quickly.
Yeah I do as well but this is far from universal. I help people with computers at the library. I see a lot of inboxes. A lot of people not only don't clear stuff out of their inboxes but have never changed any of the software defaults away from whatever they were set with. So for gmail, for example, this means never changing the Promotions/Social tabs, never setting up email filters, never changing the default theme. In some cases, they don't even set up folders (or labels). I've seen people with over 100,000 emails in their inbox.
In many cases their inboxes are filling with political emails, companies who send emails every day (if you buy things regularly from companies this can be a lot) or emails that they signed up for (a lot of newsletters from major media for example, I see a lot of people who are signed up with multiple NYTimes mailing lists as one example) and don't really know how to unsubscribe. Many people who use social media, especially facebook, get a LOT of notifications from there sent to their emails. My experience is that a lot of people feel that they just need to sort of catch their breath and catch up on those emails and so they don't delete stuff that feels important but then they never have that sort of time. Many people feel they've tried to unsubscribe from things and it didn't work (I hear this a lot) so they sort of give up trying.
Sometimes it's people with mobile, who use email as a sort of alert thing but don't really think of their inbox as a thing that needs maintenance. My sister is more like this. If I need a reply I need to make it either a pretty quick reply, or need to understand that she'll only reply maybe on weekends when she's on her home computer, otherwise she just interacts with her personal email via her phone and sometimes her ipad, often on the go.
I use a lot of auto-filtering (and show people how to do that) which keeps my inbox numbers down. To me it's not wasting time, it's the system that works for me. A lot of people don't really have that concept of having an "organizational system" with email the same way they would with, say, their kitchen or the trunk of their car (where you can buy organizing products). It's definitely a curious phenomenon.
posted by jessamyn at 2:33 PM on October 26 [4 favorites]
Yeah I do as well but this is far from universal. I help people with computers at the library. I see a lot of inboxes. A lot of people not only don't clear stuff out of their inboxes but have never changed any of the software defaults away from whatever they were set with. So for gmail, for example, this means never changing the Promotions/Social tabs, never setting up email filters, never changing the default theme. In some cases, they don't even set up folders (or labels). I've seen people with over 100,000 emails in their inbox.
In many cases their inboxes are filling with political emails, companies who send emails every day (if you buy things regularly from companies this can be a lot) or emails that they signed up for (a lot of newsletters from major media for example, I see a lot of people who are signed up with multiple NYTimes mailing lists as one example) and don't really know how to unsubscribe. Many people who use social media, especially facebook, get a LOT of notifications from there sent to their emails. My experience is that a lot of people feel that they just need to sort of catch their breath and catch up on those emails and so they don't delete stuff that feels important but then they never have that sort of time. Many people feel they've tried to unsubscribe from things and it didn't work (I hear this a lot) so they sort of give up trying.
Sometimes it's people with mobile, who use email as a sort of alert thing but don't really think of their inbox as a thing that needs maintenance. My sister is more like this. If I need a reply I need to make it either a pretty quick reply, or need to understand that she'll only reply maybe on weekends when she's on her home computer, otherwise she just interacts with her personal email via her phone and sometimes her ipad, often on the go.
I use a lot of auto-filtering (and show people how to do that) which keeps my inbox numbers down. To me it's not wasting time, it's the system that works for me. A lot of people don't really have that concept of having an "organizational system" with email the same way they would with, say, their kitchen or the trunk of their car (where you can buy organizing products). It's definitely a curious phenomenon.
posted by jessamyn at 2:33 PM on October 26 [4 favorites]
Tens of thousands at home, none at work.
Thing is, "deleting" email isn't really that. They don't really get deleted, they just get moved to a different folder called "deleted". You can use read/unread status to indicate the same thing.
At work I just like seeing the empty list and move things to deleted, action required (but not right now), or "gonna need this later". I don't get much junk mail at all and pretty much read every email. At home it's just read and unread. Most of the unread more than a day old is junk I have no intention of ever reading and I can tell just from the subject line, so why bother spending any more energy on it?
Spammers don't even get the energy of click-to-select, click-to-delete. It's just ignored.
posted by ctmf at 2:56 PM on October 26
Thing is, "deleting" email isn't really that. They don't really get deleted, they just get moved to a different folder called "deleted". You can use read/unread status to indicate the same thing.
At work I just like seeing the empty list and move things to deleted, action required (but not right now), or "gonna need this later". I don't get much junk mail at all and pretty much read every email. At home it's just read and unread. Most of the unread more than a day old is junk I have no intention of ever reading and I can tell just from the subject line, so why bother spending any more energy on it?
Spammers don't even get the energy of click-to-select, click-to-delete. It's just ignored.
posted by ctmf at 2:56 PM on October 26
My process is exactly like OP’s. I set up one filter per topic that both tags AND files each filtered email, so I don’t waste any time beyond that. Then my inbox becomes a sparse place where “things that need doing” live. Usually 20-40, never more than 100
I do have a eleventy billion better systems for keeping track of things - but I have poor working memory / executive function / energy levels so the inbox becomes a stopgap clearing house. (Especially during working hours, when I’ll read an email, but immediately return to work and forget it.)
email is nothing like the fridge because if you leave stuff in it it doesn’t smell or fill a subfolder with fetid liquid that must be dealt with.
Anyone who is able to check their email once and immediately take the appropriate action, to either execute completely or move to a to-do system, I salute and am extremely jealous of you! Unfortunately, if my account wasn’t organized to keep the inbox count low, the fetid liquid that would leak out of it would be missed bills, missed appointments, and missed connections from friends and family.
posted by seemoorglass at 3:08 PM on October 26 [5 favorites]
I do have a eleventy billion better systems for keeping track of things - but I have poor working memory / executive function / energy levels so the inbox becomes a stopgap clearing house. (Especially during working hours, when I’ll read an email, but immediately return to work and forget it.)
email is nothing like the fridge because if you leave stuff in it it doesn’t smell or fill a subfolder with fetid liquid that must be dealt with.
Anyone who is able to check their email once and immediately take the appropriate action, to either execute completely or move to a to-do system, I salute and am extremely jealous of you! Unfortunately, if my account wasn’t organized to keep the inbox count low, the fetid liquid that would leak out of it would be missed bills, missed appointments, and missed connections from friends and family.
posted by seemoorglass at 3:08 PM on October 26 [5 favorites]
Spam spam spam spam, mailing lists, mailing lists that begat other mailing lists, I feel like I'm on every list. Probably get just 25-40/day and since my new job makes it difficult to check personal email, it piles and piles and is exhausting to read through to see what needs action vs. what can be read and deleted vs. "hey, I want to look at something in this later on a bigger screen than this phone" and...sigh. Almost none of it is personal/needs an actual response.
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:26 PM on October 26 [5 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:26 PM on October 26 [5 favorites]
"unread" = not dealt with
sort by "unread" for a to do list.
posted by lalochezia at 3:26 PM on October 26 [1 favorite]
sort by "unread" for a to do list.
posted by lalochezia at 3:26 PM on October 26 [1 favorite]
Emails are of many varieties: client email, prospect inquiries, emails related to my professional association forum (and the various sub-fora to which I belong), confirmations of/reminders for/replays of webinars for which I've registered, newsletters (substacks, etc.), political email (which I don't necessarily consider spam), Google updates that tell me I or my business showed up online, LinkedIn notifications so I can continue the conversation in a timely way (but no other social media notifications), updates from my website host about security, offers of screeners for focus groups and surveys I do for money, alumni mail, financial/investment updates, Amazon alerts, etc.
Note, I subscribe to a LOT of newsletters related to my profession and things that end up being sources/links for my blog. If I weren't a writer, and if I were retired and closed my company, I'd have very few emails, just like the OP.
I get 200+ non-spam emails each day; I don't KEEP hundreds of emails in my inbox, but if I've been out all day with clients, I do return to them. If I go away for a short trip, I return to 1000. So, there are days where I return to find a LOT to process. (I do not have email on my phone; if it's necessary, I can log in on the browser, but I address email when I can 100% focus on the work, and generally only at my desk, on my terms). Note, I unsubscribe liberally; what's in my inbox is almost always necessary to my professional and/or personal life.
I read/review everything and either file (I've got LOTS of sub-folders for work and personal reference) or delete. I get why some people are satisfied using "search" instead of hierarchy, but my brain doesn't work that way. I have professional and personal folders, with a detailed hierarchy of sub-folders. While search might find a specific email on a specific topic or from a specific person, it likely would not allow me to find a random, ill-recalled name for a link in a newsletter from five years ago where each newsletter has dozens of links. My ability to file an email based on what kind of blog post or client I'd use it for means that I have almost perfect access, immediately, and unlike penguin pie, nothing I file could be needed for more than one specific, narrow purpose.
So, at various periods, I have lots of emails, but I couldn't function if there were unread emails in my inbox because it's the brain center of my operation. I have a system for quickly processing my email. (Note: I'm a professional organizer and productivity specialists, so this takes very little of my time. Obviously, the systems I come up with for my clients are different from the systems I use for myself, as such things should be customized for individual users.)
My goal is that by the time I shut down in the evening, there are never more than 16 emails in my inbox (which is just enough to have some white space at the bottom of the list, above the preview pane — to give me breathing space). Three emails, at the top, stay there forever, as the subject lines are motivators.
My email deluge — intricately organized and swiftly processed — is voluminous, but easily handled. If it just sat there with all of those categories unsorted and unread for more than a day, I'd potentially lose the bulk of prospective clients and miss out on the work and life opportunities that keep me afloat.
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 3:40 PM on October 26 [2 favorites]
Note, I subscribe to a LOT of newsletters related to my profession and things that end up being sources/links for my blog. If I weren't a writer, and if I were retired and closed my company, I'd have very few emails, just like the OP.
I get 200+ non-spam emails each day; I don't KEEP hundreds of emails in my inbox, but if I've been out all day with clients, I do return to them. If I go away for a short trip, I return to 1000. So, there are days where I return to find a LOT to process. (I do not have email on my phone; if it's necessary, I can log in on the browser, but I address email when I can 100% focus on the work, and generally only at my desk, on my terms). Note, I unsubscribe liberally; what's in my inbox is almost always necessary to my professional and/or personal life.
I read/review everything and either file (I've got LOTS of sub-folders for work and personal reference) or delete. I get why some people are satisfied using "search" instead of hierarchy, but my brain doesn't work that way. I have professional and personal folders, with a detailed hierarchy of sub-folders. While search might find a specific email on a specific topic or from a specific person, it likely would not allow me to find a random, ill-recalled name for a link in a newsletter from five years ago where each newsletter has dozens of links. My ability to file an email based on what kind of blog post or client I'd use it for means that I have almost perfect access, immediately, and unlike penguin pie, nothing I file could be needed for more than one specific, narrow purpose.
So, at various periods, I have lots of emails, but I couldn't function if there were unread emails in my inbox because it's the brain center of my operation. I have a system for quickly processing my email. (Note: I'm a professional organizer and productivity specialists, so this takes very little of my time. Obviously, the systems I come up with for my clients are different from the systems I use for myself, as such things should be customized for individual users.)
My goal is that by the time I shut down in the evening, there are never more than 16 emails in my inbox (which is just enough to have some white space at the bottom of the list, above the preview pane — to give me breathing space). Three emails, at the top, stay there forever, as the subject lines are motivators.
My email deluge — intricately organized and swiftly processed — is voluminous, but easily handled. If it just sat there with all of those categories unsorted and unread for more than a day, I'd potentially lose the bulk of prospective clients and miss out on the work and life opportunities that keep me afloat.
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 3:40 PM on October 26 [2 favorites]
120k emails in inbox, 73k unread. I never imagined that this was an unusual state of affairs.
I apologize deeply to woksoflife, newegg, figure1, zillow, penzeys, various democratic/liberal candidates/causes/clubs that I may have donated to or expressed an interest in donating to, "prestigious" for-profit medical journals and associations which have recognized my brilliance in medical research and mistakenly believed I was a doctor or prof or somesuch, allison roman, facebook, classmates.com, linkedin, and others whose name/identity elides me at the moment.
Your communiques deserved more from me and I regret my actions.
posted by Maxwell_Smart at 3:41 PM on October 26 [5 favorites]
I apologize deeply to woksoflife, newegg, figure1, zillow, penzeys, various democratic/liberal candidates/causes/clubs that I may have donated to or expressed an interest in donating to, "prestigious" for-profit medical journals and associations which have recognized my brilliance in medical research and mistakenly believed I was a doctor or prof or somesuch, allison roman, facebook, classmates.com, linkedin, and others whose name/identity elides me at the moment.
Your communiques deserved more from me and I regret my actions.
posted by Maxwell_Smart at 3:41 PM on October 26 [5 favorites]
As a system administrator I can easily get 100 emails per day from various automated processes. A lot of this is noise, in the sense that it represents normal operation so it's not as if I need to actually read all of these messages every day. But I can't just turn them off, not least because when something does go wrong, the emails represent a record of what happened in the lead-up to such an event.
posted by axiom at 4:31 PM on October 26
posted by axiom at 4:31 PM on October 26
Most people are commenting that they'll read and respond to things that need immediate action, which is cool. But I believe anything left unread will just get drowned in all the new messages. How are you remembering to scroll back multiple days to find them again? You need some sort of protected, secondary to-do list area or filter or tag or external tool or something.
So for us neatniks that do it directly in our inbox, the setup is: unread inbox (new), read inbox (saved to do later), and archived/deleted (done).
And if I sound accusatory, it's because I genuinely believe the messy inbox is why we have to pick up the phone or have that unnecessary meeting.
posted by Snijglau at 4:57 PM on October 26 [4 favorites]
So for us neatniks that do it directly in our inbox, the setup is: unread inbox (new), read inbox (saved to do later), and archived/deleted (done).
And if I sound accusatory, it's because I genuinely believe the messy inbox is why we have to pick up the phone or have that unnecessary meeting.
posted by Snijglau at 4:57 PM on October 26 [4 favorites]
Pretty much spam.
Kamala and Tim seem to email me a lot. And Kamala HQ, and Kamala herself!
And bullshit LinkedIn stuff. And obvious scam shit.
posted by Windopaene at 5:47 PM on October 26 [1 favorite]
Kamala and Tim seem to email me a lot. And Kamala HQ, and Kamala herself!
And bullshit LinkedIn stuff. And obvious scam shit.
posted by Windopaene at 5:47 PM on October 26 [1 favorite]
I delete junk mail but everything else stays in the inbox. I don’t have a folder system. I have actually no idea how many messages are in there, tens of thousands.
Stuff that actually needs my attention, I read pretty quickly. I use starred emails to keep track of those that need a response or are connected to a “to-do” item and try to keep those to fewer than 20. This system works well for me. Though I don’t always respond to people as quickly as I would like, I don’t lose track of information either.
posted by mai at 6:01 PM on October 26 [1 favorite]
Stuff that actually needs my attention, I read pretty quickly. I use starred emails to keep track of those that need a response or are connected to a “to-do” item and try to keep those to fewer than 20. This system works well for me. Though I don’t always respond to people as quickly as I would like, I don’t lose track of information either.
posted by mai at 6:01 PM on October 26 [1 favorite]
I'm on team "leave everything in the inbox" -- I deal with emails as I read them if possible and use the "flag" feature in Apple Mail for anything that needs further attention.
posted by panic at 7:53 PM on October 26
posted by panic at 7:53 PM on October 26
my inbox's thousands of unread emails could achieve sentience and I still wouldn't care about it
posted by scruss at 8:26 PM on October 26 [2 favorites]
posted by scruss at 8:26 PM on October 26 [2 favorites]
I've had the same personal gmail address for....what...a couple decades now? So, spam. Huge amounts of spam.
And that's true of the secondary work emails I use for signups and specific services and etc that aren't meant to receive email that requires responses. But not my primary work email.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:34 PM on October 26
And that's true of the secondary work emails I use for signups and specific services and etc that aren't meant to receive email that requires responses. But not my primary work email.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:34 PM on October 26
I treat my inbox as a temporary holding space, for work and personal email. As with the mailbox at my house, each time I check my email, I empty it out. This process usually takes all of a minute or two unless something requires a lengthy reply. For each email, I'll reply if it's required, then it's deleted, archived or pinned / starred if I need to follow up on it later. I periodically check the pinned / starred emails when I'm working through my to-do list. I'm also vigilant about unsubscribing from emails I don't want or need and filtering automated notification emails into their own folders.
At work I'll often get a few dozen automatically filtered into a folder. Just to make sure I don't miss anything, I'll check those folders occasionally. Based on the subject I can usually see they don't need any response or action, so I'll check the first one, scroll to the last unread and shift-click to select the whole bunch in one go and Mark as read. That way I know I haven't missed anything important in the filtered folders.
I've used this approach for 20+ years now and it's worked well for me. I have friends and family with thousands of unread emails in their inbox and I figure that works for them. To each their own.
posted by jaden at 8:34 PM on October 26
At work I'll often get a few dozen automatically filtered into a folder. Just to make sure I don't miss anything, I'll check those folders occasionally. Based on the subject I can usually see they don't need any response or action, so I'll check the first one, scroll to the last unread and shift-click to select the whole bunch in one go and Mark as read. That way I know I haven't missed anything important in the filtered folders.
I've used this approach for 20+ years now and it's worked well for me. I have friends and family with thousands of unread emails in their inbox and I figure that works for them. To each their own.
posted by jaden at 8:34 PM on October 26
So I came in hot earlier and said that there was no point in emptying my inbox because nothing bad happens if it’s full. And I stand by that but I have to add: because I manage my To Dos in other ways. So whoever said that incredibly full inboxes cost them time because that meeting probably already was an email — it’s not an inbox problem, it’s an organizational system problem. (Actually it’s because they don’t have the actual best method in place, the moleskin knockoff notebook with a rolling daily handwritten to do list, and color coding.)
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 9:12 PM on October 26
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 9:12 PM on October 26
It depends on how you define "inbox". I use Gmail, and my actual, on-screen inbox is currently at 22 - two unread and 20 read, but still visible because they contain actions I need to take in the near future, and I don't want to forget about them.
But if I go to "all mail", there's 29k emails in there, because I've had this Gmail account since 2003 and I just hit "archive" when I'm done with an email that I want to keep (and delete/trash ones I don't). I don't really bother with labels or filters in my personal email life (at work, I use them ruthlessly), I just archive and search and that's plenty.
I don't give a damn about "inbox zero" or any other productivity nonsense; I just like not having a cluttered inbox, so I keep on top of mine and archive/trash as soon as I don't need an email any more.
posted by pdb at 10:07 PM on October 26
But if I go to "all mail", there's 29k emails in there, because I've had this Gmail account since 2003 and I just hit "archive" when I'm done with an email that I want to keep (and delete/trash ones I don't). I don't really bother with labels or filters in my personal email life (at work, I use them ruthlessly), I just archive and search and that's plenty.
I don't give a damn about "inbox zero" or any other productivity nonsense; I just like not having a cluttered inbox, so I keep on top of mine and archive/trash as soon as I don't need an email any more.
posted by pdb at 10:07 PM on October 26
Kamala is every 3rd email.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:48 PM on October 26 [1 favorite]
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:48 PM on October 26 [1 favorite]
Very little hits my actual inbox on my personal primary email. I have had my GMail account for 20+ years. I have close to 200 filters that I used tag items and skip the inbox. The only items that hit my inbox are either unsolicited emails, emails from people I have not previously corresponded with, or when say a mailing list changes the sending email address and I have to adjust the filter. I am very strict about giving out that email address. I sort them all on the way in so that I essentially let Google prioritize them based on my input and tag them accordingly. Say anything from when my children were in school would go to a specific "folder" or tag. If I had say 5 folders with unread messages, at a glance I could decide which ones to read first. It does make for lots of folders, but so what.
I have several GMail addresses and my own domain so one gets all the subscriptions to say newpaper daily summaries, sale announcements from some store, Another gets things like notices from apps. If I buy tickets on ticketmaster and they want an email address I give them TicketMaster@mydomain so I also know if they sell it or get hacked, etc. The subscription email address has literally 10s of thousands of emails in the inbox. Nothing ever leaves it. The opposite of my personal one. Every once in a while I will mark them all as "read", but I take no other action.
When I first got my GMail account (2004? 2005?) I saw an interview with Mark Cuban who said he has every email he ever sent or received. Coupled with Google saying you never have to delete an email, I too have never deleted an email. The exception would be true Spam and one time I recceived an email in error intended for someone with a very similar name that contained detailed financial information. I sent the sender a response that they had the incorrect email addy and I deleted it bc I did not want the responsibilitry of maintiaining their privacy.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 11:02 PM on October 26 [1 favorite]
I have several GMail addresses and my own domain so one gets all the subscriptions to say newpaper daily summaries, sale announcements from some store, Another gets things like notices from apps. If I buy tickets on ticketmaster and they want an email address I give them TicketMaster@mydomain so I also know if they sell it or get hacked, etc. The subscription email address has literally 10s of thousands of emails in the inbox. Nothing ever leaves it. The opposite of my personal one. Every once in a while I will mark them all as "read", but I take no other action.
When I first got my GMail account (2004? 2005?) I saw an interview with Mark Cuban who said he has every email he ever sent or received. Coupled with Google saying you never have to delete an email, I too have never deleted an email. The exception would be true Spam and one time I recceived an email in error intended for someone with a very similar name that contained detailed financial information. I sent the sender a response that they had the incorrect email addy and I deleted it bc I did not want the responsibilitry of maintiaining their privacy.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 11:02 PM on October 26 [1 favorite]
Mod note: [We've added this interesting thread to the sidebar and Best Of blog!]
posted by taz (staff) at 1:16 AM on October 27 [1 favorite]
posted by taz (staff) at 1:16 AM on October 27 [1 favorite]
I can't use search at work because a lot of projects overlap with the same terms and same senders, so I have to assign them to specific folders to be able to find those emails later. I do the same process with my personal inbox which is often down to just current emails (less than 100) that are waiting for a response before filing.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 2:11 AM on October 27
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 2:11 AM on October 27
I’ve got seven emails in my personal (+freelance) inbox, not counting the stuff that gets automatically filtered across tabs or into folders/tags I’ve created myself. I also have three email accounts for work, on different platforms, and they’re organised more or less the same, with differing levels of priority (one is a day-to-day client account where I’m fastidious about keeping only “need to action” items in the inbox while everything else goes in a folder; the others are lower traffic and relatively less tidy).
It’s a habit I developed before search was really reliable for surfacing whatever I needed to look for. I organise the folders on my computer in a similar manner, even though I’m just as likely to bring up the search box with a keyboard shortcut. It works for me.
posted by macdara at 3:46 AM on October 27
It’s a habit I developed before search was really reliable for surfacing whatever I needed to look for. I organise the folders on my computer in a similar manner, even though I’m just as likely to bring up the search box with a keyboard shortcut. It works for me.
posted by macdara at 3:46 AM on October 27
Another benefit of folders, I’ve found, is that I can combine them with search to drill down to find what I’m looking for more precisely. So I’m not inclined to change my habits.
posted by macdara at 3:48 AM on October 27
posted by macdara at 3:48 AM on October 27
One other aspect of keeping/archiving emails forever is the CO2 cost.
In Mike Berners-Lee's book 'How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything', he calculates that our average annual email usage generates up to 40 kilograms of CO2, which equates to driving around 200 kilometers in a small petrol car.
Also I think a lot of people forget that old emails are generally being backed up every day, a process which costs time and money. At my employer the email backups were taking 16 hours per day before we moved them into the cloud and made it someone else's problem.
posted by Lanark at 3:55 AM on October 27 [2 favorites]
In Mike Berners-Lee's book 'How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything', he calculates that our average annual email usage generates up to 40 kilograms of CO2, which equates to driving around 200 kilometers in a small petrol car.
Also I think a lot of people forget that old emails are generally being backed up every day, a process which costs time and money. At my employer the email backups were taking 16 hours per day before we moved them into the cloud and made it someone else's problem.
posted by Lanark at 3:55 AM on October 27 [2 favorites]
I process my Inbox to zero regularly. An email either has value, like some information I want to see, or it does not, which I archive immediately.
If the information is useful, I read it and archive the message or move the information/email into another container. If I get a lot of emails from one source, that could be a folder/label; that happens via a filter that does this automatically, removing the message from the Inbox.
Otherwise, I copy/paste into another container, such as a project management system or a folder hierarchy.
Having an endless series of messages in my Inbox is a source of potential confusion or a query for me: "Did I do the thing in that email?" So, moving them out of the Inbox is a high priority as a regular maintenance step for information handling.
posted by diode at 5:46 AM on October 27 [1 favorite]
If the information is useful, I read it and archive the message or move the information/email into another container. If I get a lot of emails from one source, that could be a folder/label; that happens via a filter that does this automatically, removing the message from the Inbox.
Otherwise, I copy/paste into another container, such as a project management system or a folder hierarchy.
Having an endless series of messages in my Inbox is a source of potential confusion or a query for me: "Did I do the thing in that email?" So, moving them out of the Inbox is a high priority as a regular maintenance step for information handling.
posted by diode at 5:46 AM on October 27 [1 favorite]
I have a massive amount of mail filters set up for my work (Federal employee). The goal is twofold: move things that are likely important into a few folders, and move things that are rarely or definitely NOT important into a few other folders. The former are checked manually to see if they need action, and the latter are marked as read but either retained in case I need to reference them for any reason, or outright deleted.
Anything left unread in my inbox after all that gets a manual check to see what it is, and if I get enough of that type of email in future it gets its own filter.
I could just leave it all in one folder and use search, but Outlook search functions are nigh useless for most purposes. I have searched for my own name in my own inbox and had it come up with no matches. Any search for mail more than a month ago means I am guessing at when it came in and am searching by manually scrolling through mail. It got better when they moved to cloud backend, but my mailbox ballooned big enough that I could not cache it all locally due to Windows limits on file size, because some genius at Microsoft decided your Outlook inbox should be a single file I guess? Now I get the stupid “more messages on server” notice in most of my folders and of course search ignores the messages on server. Sigh.
When my university moved to Gmail web interface only for mail access, I lost filters that had been in place for over a decade. I did my best to recreate the filters in Gmail but it didn’t really work, Gmail built-in filters silently fail if they are too complex (and apparently that’s what it considers my filters?). Net result is that I don’t use that email for anything, I just periodically log in and mark everything as read. There are a few action-required messages I look for but otherwise I don’t use it at all.
My ideal setup is my personal mail setup. Every message since 2004 (and a block of mail from before that, that I imported via IMAP), in one set of flat files in Thunderbird. Quick, flexible search, mail filters honed by over 20 years of use (seriously, there are some that were probably imported from Netscape Communicator suite), and if I could export the mail filters into iOS so that I didn’t need to open desktop mail to filter things when traveling, I’d be 100% happy. A few days away from my desktop, and that notice of hundreds of unread messages starts to stress me out, even though I know 90% of it is stuff I don’t need to read…
posted by caution live frogs at 8:03 AM on October 27
Anything left unread in my inbox after all that gets a manual check to see what it is, and if I get enough of that type of email in future it gets its own filter.
I could just leave it all in one folder and use search, but Outlook search functions are nigh useless for most purposes. I have searched for my own name in my own inbox and had it come up with no matches. Any search for mail more than a month ago means I am guessing at when it came in and am searching by manually scrolling through mail. It got better when they moved to cloud backend, but my mailbox ballooned big enough that I could not cache it all locally due to Windows limits on file size, because some genius at Microsoft decided your Outlook inbox should be a single file I guess? Now I get the stupid “more messages on server” notice in most of my folders and of course search ignores the messages on server. Sigh.
When my university moved to Gmail web interface only for mail access, I lost filters that had been in place for over a decade. I did my best to recreate the filters in Gmail but it didn’t really work, Gmail built-in filters silently fail if they are too complex (and apparently that’s what it considers my filters?). Net result is that I don’t use that email for anything, I just periodically log in and mark everything as read. There are a few action-required messages I look for but otherwise I don’t use it at all.
My ideal setup is my personal mail setup. Every message since 2004 (and a block of mail from before that, that I imported via IMAP), in one set of flat files in Thunderbird. Quick, flexible search, mail filters honed by over 20 years of use (seriously, there are some that were probably imported from Netscape Communicator suite), and if I could export the mail filters into iOS so that I didn’t need to open desktop mail to filter things when traveling, I’d be 100% happy. A few days away from my desktop, and that notice of hundreds of unread messages starts to stress me out, even though I know 90% of it is stuff I don’t need to read…
posted by caution live frogs at 8:03 AM on October 27
Inbox check:
A total of 3,639 unread messages across four non-work accounts. Gmail is the biggest culprit, and I'm about due for some updates to filters to get that number down to zero.
Zero unread in work Gmail, because most communications there is via Slack and the majority of emails are automated messages from various enterprise tools. I can easily receive hundreds of emails per day at work, but a tiny percentage need reading.
I used to be a lot more fastidious about Inbox Zero, but fell out of the habit because so much of my daily communication with non-work people is through texting.
posted by emelenjr at 10:33 AM on October 27
A total of 3,639 unread messages across four non-work accounts. Gmail is the biggest culprit, and I'm about due for some updates to filters to get that number down to zero.
Zero unread in work Gmail, because most communications there is via Slack and the majority of emails are automated messages from various enterprise tools. I can easily receive hundreds of emails per day at work, but a tiny percentage need reading.
I used to be a lot more fastidious about Inbox Zero, but fell out of the habit because so much of my daily communication with non-work people is through texting.
posted by emelenjr at 10:33 AM on October 27
OK, now you've given me an unstoppable itch to visit my Apple Mail filters, which haven't been looked at in over a year and aren't doing everything they could be for me.
I currently have 48 messages in my inbox, all read because I can't not read them (unless the subject line is a giveaway that I don't need to). So I do mark them read, even if I don't delete them right away. Others land in my inbox (even my favorite newsletters) because that's the primary place I look for new emails. I almost always forget to delete them just after reading. Email from family and friends gets starred automatically and eventually filed.
My rules in Outlook at work are far more ruthless, and I still get a ton of stuff each day. I have no idea how many things are in my inbox now; on Thursday it was less than 100 (all read), but then I took a day off on Friday so I'm sure I'll have way too many to catch up on tomorrow.
posted by lhauser at 6:32 PM on October 27
I currently have 48 messages in my inbox, all read because I can't not read them (unless the subject line is a giveaway that I don't need to). So I do mark them read, even if I don't delete them right away. Others land in my inbox (even my favorite newsletters) because that's the primary place I look for new emails. I almost always forget to delete them just after reading. Email from family and friends gets starred automatically and eventually filed.
My rules in Outlook at work are far more ruthless, and I still get a ton of stuff each day. I have no idea how many things are in my inbox now; on Thursday it was less than 100 (all read), but then I took a day off on Friday so I'm sure I'll have way too many to catch up on tomorrow.
posted by lhauser at 6:32 PM on October 27
Desktop Outlook user here.
Most of my contracts / jobs run for years, so archiving them would make searching for things more tedious (my jobs often use the same contractors too, so again archiving would split things up too much), and when I get some free time I'd rather be in my garden, or learning my lathe than sorting email.
Also my jobs tend to go to sleep and reawaken 5+ years later so very wary even of archiving. I do go through manually occasionally and remove (and save) attachments to reduce data size.
And yes texting disrupts clean work flows. I'm still amazed what people will ask - and agree to via a txt, it still feels a very unprofesional medium to me.
I have a gmail for personal but am letting it die as working toward decoupling from all things google.
I avoid subscribing to almost anything to reduce non-work items, and most filters send items to subfolders in a topfolder called CLUTTER.
posted by unearthed at 1:43 PM on October 28
Most of my contracts / jobs run for years, so archiving them would make searching for things more tedious (my jobs often use the same contractors too, so again archiving would split things up too much), and when I get some free time I'd rather be in my garden, or learning my lathe than sorting email.
Also my jobs tend to go to sleep and reawaken 5+ years later so very wary even of archiving. I do go through manually occasionally and remove (and save) attachments to reduce data size.
And yes texting disrupts clean work flows. I'm still amazed what people will ask - and agree to via a txt, it still feels a very unprofesional medium to me.
I have a gmail for personal but am letting it die as working toward decoupling from all things google.
I avoid subscribing to almost anything to reduce non-work items, and most filters send items to subfolders in a topfolder called CLUTTER.
posted by unearthed at 1:43 PM on October 28
I've used Gmail for personal email since the invite-only days and I use Outlook for desktop to harvest my fice work-related emails.
I used to use lots of folders and things to archive email, sort them into subjects etc etc. But I gave up. Everything goes into the inbox and, if it's read, it's dealt with. If I open something I can't completely deal with on the spot, it gets marked as unread for later action. If I want to find it later, I use search. I hate doing it this way, because I'm someone that likes things to be all organised and in their rightful place, but the volume just got to be too much, so search it is. I'm almost annoyed every time I realise this probably works better than lots of folders etc, because it's inconsistent with how I think things should be organised, but here I am.
posted by dg at 7:00 PM on October 28
I used to use lots of folders and things to archive email, sort them into subjects etc etc. But I gave up. Everything goes into the inbox and, if it's read, it's dealt with. If I open something I can't completely deal with on the spot, it gets marked as unread for later action. If I want to find it later, I use search. I hate doing it this way, because I'm someone that likes things to be all organised and in their rightful place, but the volume just got to be too much, so search it is. I'm almost annoyed every time I realise this probably works better than lots of folders etc, because it's inconsistent with how I think things should be organised, but here I am.
posted by dg at 7:00 PM on October 28
I have a hobby that generates a lot of email notifications which I prefer to be searchable, and which it is occasionally useful to me to be so. On top of all the regular emails (all the spam and bacn), that's what's in my email, which is Gmail.
I should probably go in and clean up some of the cruft but I haven't bothered in a while.
posted by verbminx at 11:55 PM on October 29
I should probably go in and clean up some of the cruft but I haven't bothered in a while.
posted by verbminx at 11:55 PM on October 29
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I don't delete email because I refer back to it sometimes and yes this means I keep stuff I don't need to, but also I don't need to read everything either.
posted by freethefeet at 1:50 PM on October 26 [3 favorites]