Inbox to Zero In Just 18 Short Months (*results not typical)

March 31st, 2006

Last weekend I made the jump from over 6000 Inbox messages (across 6 different email accounts) to under 30, with some inspiration from the folks over on 43Folders. I jest that it took me 18 months, seeing that the last time I had my inbox so empty was when I switched from a PC to a Mac and never bothered moving over any messages from my Outlook (I have the PST stored on a backup harddrive somewhere).Truth be told, it really did only take me about an hour to process most of the emails; deleting the bulk of them (meeting minutes from old jobs, random questions for projects now finished, and all those “d00d!! what are you doing this weekend”-type emails) and only putting a few hundred away for keeps. The “keeps” folder needs to be resorted between work and personal stuff, but I’ll leave that for another weekend when I’m bored out of my mind enough to deal with simple things like that. If I’m smart, I’ll try and set up something fancy with MailTags and use Mail’s SmartFolders to deal with it.

As refreshing as the whole experience was, it really lays bear the fact that I’m just flat out terrible at responding to email (and probably communicating to people that I don’t see everyday in general). One other large chunk of the email I got to delete was there simply because I never responded to it and it’s no longer relevant. That’s one way to deal with email, but obviously not the best. I do promise to get back to everyone who has written in the past few weeks, hopefully soon. I’ll be taking a mini-vacation to Florida for the next couple days, so I’m sure I’ll have a whole new mess of email awaiting me upon my return.

If you haven’t given it a shot, I suggest it strongly! I know this has been Alicia’s mantra for years; she’s a wise one alright! Nothing like the clean, naked feeling of a near-empty inbox. Now if only I’d actually respond to the emails that are now building up, I probably wouldn’t have to deal with the same situation again in just a few months.