Why do I have so many emails in my personal inbox?
- It’s easier to search for something in the pile than trying to process every email when it comes in.
- Finding an email using search forces me to be creative in what search terms I use – I must use a unique search term to find the email I’m looking for.
- I’m lazy. It would take too much time and mental energy to ruthlessly file away semi-important incoming emails into the correct folder or take the time to figure out if I should take action now or later on them.
Like most of us, I am a man of contrasts. I don’t believe in eating up too much space on server farms. So I do several things to keep my email account from hitting Google’s free-cloud limit. (Currently, I’m at 33%.) Here are those actions:
- I go back to old emails and delete the ones with attachments. (Those are the space hogs.)
- Occasionally, I go back to the beginning of time and delete a few pages of emails, without taking too much time to figure out if they have value.
- I am ruthless about deleting incoming emails that I see no immediate need to keep. (This is a more recent habit – otherwise, the inbox number would be lower.)
What’s your personal inbox number?
Compared to you I’m a total lightweight: just over 200 in one account and just over 100 in another. I have a few folders where I keep some stuff, but none of them have more than a couple dozen emails in them. Once I complete a job, I usually go back and delete all the emails about it – both received and sent.
Very impressive, Debbie!