Inbox zero? Naah.

inbox-etcYou may have heard of the movement called “Inbox Zero.” That’s the invention of Merlin Mann. The basic concept is that if you keep your inbox at zero by carefully putting all keeper emails in various folders and ruthlessly deleting the rest, you will be a happy camper.

My realities are: inbox 450 = happiness; sent box 50 = happiness; and trash folder 2100+ = happiness. I use Apple’s Mail for my mail client. My gmail account and work account both feed into there. Apple Mail automatically deletes stuff from the trash that is older than a month. That’s good enough for me; I never delete anything from there. So the more in my trash folder, the happier I am. (That means I have been ruthless with my other folders.)

I am afraid that if I file any incoming email in a folder other than the inbox, I will forget about it.

Maybe once a week or so, I try to spend an hour or so going through my inbox and outbox to delete stuff that I know I will no longer need. And I always delete stuff right away that I’m sure I am finished with. It’s always gratifying to see that trash box grow.

Yes, I use gmail’s feature of having a large amount of storage. I am always at about 25% of the capacity that I can use. I only delete stuff from there that has large attachments.

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