how many unread emails you usually got?

This is giving me an idea for a new poll. Stay tuned.

Personal is a total shambles (3500+ unread in gmail. Work is probably under 20 and those were read then marked unread to remember something and never marked read again.

see this is why i think moving stuff you've dealt with out of the inbox is good.

if you leave everything in the inbox and manually mark as unread the emails that you still need to deal with:

read = i have dealt with it
unread = i have not dealt with it. i might have read it. but maybe not.
in the inbox = means nothing

if you move stuff out of the inbox once you've dealt with it then

read = i have read it
unread = i have not read it
in the inbox = i have not dealt with it

surely this is better? it's the same amount of work.

Oh, yeah, I wouldn't defend my method. Have we talked about how I use my calendar as a diary/to do list?

scraping the bottom of the minutiae barrel, i love it

This ranks right up with my legendary 'how old is your alarm clock?' thread

work email, which is the only one that matters, is always zero unread and usually <10 in inbox. idk i've always been that way.

I am in awe. So you just delete or file them immediately?

i'm the same... yep, delete or file immediately.

i aggressively delete anything that's irrelevant. for other stuff i try to deal with it as quickly as possible. i have a pretty good filing system and also some "action folders" for stuff i need to get back to in the near future.

I feel like my entire work life is stuff I need to get back to in the near future. I often rely on my emails to respond/follow up when I haven't received a response on items, which is a lot. I guess I could do that even after I file an email in a folder, then delete that folder when I am done with that project. Hmmm.

well that's why you mark it unread! voodoo chili's way is exactly my way. it's a hack but it basically works. the only achilles heel of this system is when you're blowing through emails and forget to mark something unread. i do occasionally toy with the idea of using different color flags for different subjects, like a glimpse into a better way, a more deliberate and organized way, but i never end up doing it.

xpost

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, May 19, 2022 2:56 PM (three hours ago)

oh, fuck changing things to "unread" (affectionately in the washing a hat way), I use folders for things that are dealt with. ... granted my folder system is only so sophisticated in that all work-related emails go in the folder "0-Work" ... but at least it means that when I scroll through the inbox, I am only seeing emails I still need to attend to. ... It means things are less likely to get buried on page 2 - many.

I do try to do this "keep your shit together" tip I learned from a client, which is "if you can deal with what an email is asking you for in 2 minutes or less, do it right away" ... the problem is the emails that require more effort to respond to, and those end up sitting in the inbox for longer.

lol in my three main Gmail accounts — one personal, two professional — I have 104,558, 37,456, and 31,435.

I could/should just delete all the unread ones, but I probably won't until Google tells me I'm out of space.

also, I am sure that of my approx. 150 unread emails -- about 50 of them are emails from months ago where the person sent me another email about the same thing and I dealt with the thing, and put the email where I actually dealt with the thing in the folder, so really I am more organized and functional than it looks like?

read = i have read it
unread = i have not read it
in the inbox = i have not dealt with it

otm

I also use the classic gmail view.

19k unread in personal account.

25k unread in work account

108 unread in small press account

Blows my mind that people care about the numbers.

― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Thursday, May 19, 2022 2:56 PM (three hours ago)

^^ this is like almost everyone I know IRL ... at one point recently I was telling a friend that I get stressed when the unread goes over 100, and he kinda gave me this look of disbelief because he rarely looks at the numbers, but they are always in the thousands

Yeah to me it's just a red blob with a number in it, I don't pay attention to what the number is and I'm used to the red blob as part of the landscape.

I do notice when someone's red blob is much larger than mine!

0/0

i spend a lot of my time getting of email lists

it also helps to just drop out of life

One fallacy about the unread count is that I have actually read the from and subject lines. If I haven't opened them, it's usually for a reason. Just leaving them boldfaced is basically the laziest way of categorizing them as trash.

10,000+ unread

0, I have Outlook set to mark them read as soon as I click on them, I scroll through so they’re marked read whether I’ve paid attention to them or not.

a lot of the emails i get are promoting music shows in my area

unfortunately i can barely leave the house, so mostly i just delete them on sight. but i haven't yet brought myself to unsubscribe, because i guess there's always hope

I can kind of get not reading email but I used to live with a guy who didn’t open his mail. Not junk mail. Bills. Priority mail. Hand written letters.

We use the "unread means not actioned" method at work, on 2 inboxes shared by 4 staff that handles thousands of emails a day. Judicious use of filters to auto-move the bulk of it to set folders also in use .Without all that we'd be up shite creek. A lot of the emails are ignorable reporting from server alerts or order updates, but theres just as much important crap coming in constantly from actual customers as well.

My current personal work account has 500ish unread messages but about 400 of those are just Jira ticket updates.

xp this is also me. I mean I get around to them in the end but there might be 20+ items before I do so. if I got handwritten letters I would probably open those immediately as there is no fear factor there.

surely this is better? it's the same amount of work.

Work email is a task list essentially. Delete anything that isn't relevant, move to a series of folders when task is complete (or far enough in the past that it's effectively complete) and trust in the now pretty blameless email search functions if I need to recover anything.

Personal email is a bit messier, but basically the same principles apply (albeit no folders with Gmail, just archive and use the search when necessary)>

28k in personal inbox, 193k (!) in work - mostly old error messages. 0 unread in both. Re: moving into folders, an effective search beats any kind of taxonomy.

Those of you cleaning out your inboxes daily, do you also move corresponding sent emails to folders as well so all the correspondence related to that topic/project are together?

lol extremely good question

“sent box zero” would be deeply impressive and of course disturbing

once it gets to like 100 unread I delete (without reading) most of them, read any that were important. I hate unread emails and sometimes I miss important shit.

at work I'm always at 0 unread because I don't get enough in a day to where I can't catch up. when I was a project manager it was typically 100 unread

lol extremely good question

“sent box zero” would be deeply impressive and of course disturbing

― Tracer Hand, Friday, May 20, 2022 9:23 AM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, I use my sent mail more than my inbox on some level. My “system” so to speak:

1. Send email.
2. Set calendar reminder to follow up on response needed (markups I’ve sent, signatures I need, responses not received, etc.).
3. When calendar pops up, find original sent email, respond to all and follow up.
4. Lather, rinse, repeat until task is completed.

i like this

that's a pretty good system, PBKR. but have you tried this?

1. stare at the inbox
2. inbox counter goes up
3. set timer.
3. read email, or at least click on it to make the counter go back to 0
4. stop timer.
5. log timer results in "precisionliving.xls", learn lessons, repeat

1. stare at inbox
2. Goto line 1.

Re: moving into folders, an effective search beats any kind of taxonomy.

― buffalo tomozzarella (ledge), Friday, May 20, 2022 3:36 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is true and it's why i leave everything in inbox in gmail. but when i started working in the mid-00s and had to use outlook, "effective search" was not a strong suit.

I have about 150 unread, almost all from the same small group of frequent spammers. A few companies refuse to remove me from their mailing lists.

Also, why don't businesses understand how email works by now? I bought a set of tires from one place and now I get weekly emails about their big sale that week on tires. Hey guys, I just bought four, I'm not going to need another set for another 5 years, stop sending me weekly emails.

Re: moving into folders, an effective search beats any kind of taxonomy.

― buffalo tomozzarella (ledge), Friday, May 20, 2022 12:36 AM (eight hours ago)

depends on if you know what you are searching for? ... idk, this is actually a really interesting philosophical question tbh

i’m not going to pretend my way is any good but your way requires eventually moving every email that comes into your inbox to…. somewhere…. whereas i don’t do that at all so no it’s not the same amount of work

― Tracer Hand, Friday, May 20, 2022 3:08 AM (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

eh, i guess i'm comparing the hassle of re-marking "unprocessed" emails as unread (a key press) with the hassle of removing processed emails from the inbox. they're both a keystroke (unless you're the kind of graybeard/sicko who files emails into specific folders).

you're right that you have to do the archive keystroke more if you remove stuff from the inbox than the mark unread keystroke if you do that.

but if you use gmail, you're presumably also using the keyboard to change to the next email. there's a key to do that, but there's a key to do that _and_ archive the current email. so if you're changing to the next email anyway, it's no extra work.

can i just say, this is one of my favorite topics and i'm having a lovely time.

in gmail hit ] to remove the current email from the inbox and switch to the next email. [ does the same but switches to the previous email. it's good.

unless you're the kind of graybeard/sicko who files emails into specific folders

i have maybe a few dozen gray hairs, and no beard ... I guess I'm a sicko? But, seriously, I think some of this is related to the fact that the language and systems (e.g. the term "folder") are semantically connected to physical organizational systems. I was putting documents in actual manila folders before I had email, and filed emails into specific folders. It's a cognitive task that I associate with organizing things, having all the things in their proper places, and knowing where those are. ... Metaphorically, the non-foldered emails feel like stacks of paper all over the place.

I could tell you stories about the guy I worked for in the early-00s who would print out emails and news articles and keep them in folders. He never threw anything away and his filing system was just these very general topics like “insurance captives” so he ended up with nearly two dozen stacks of paper 1-3 feet tall around his giant office. It was like a kid building a fort out of paper no one was ever going to read. And he viewed himself as an environmentalist, but he was just a boomer.

what is an insurance captive?

xp - I don't know if he still does this, but this local legendary punk dude who has a record label wouldn't read email, so he would have his employees print out emails that were sent to him and then fax them to him.

An insurance captive is an insurance company created by some larger companies that only insures the company that created it. I haven’t dealt with them in a long time (and not much at that) but they had a lot of tax advantages and allow the company to keep any underwriting profits instead of having them go out the door to a third party insurer.

Can also be used to self insure large SIRs/deductible and such.

I will die on this hill with my unorganized tens of thousands of unread emails

If they were letters, they would be a literal hill to die on, and lo, we would think you were mad. I salute you.

I save all my important letters fwiw

returned to work for the first time since 6/27, and...only had 130 unread emails! mind boggled, that's....really not that many! - in my previous role, that woulda been 1,000 - 2,000 at least.

and yet still, I can't begin working until all of them are read, even if I flag them as important for later. or it'll drive me nuts.