My latest Salon article is “Empty thine inbox” — a piece about e-mail overload hitched to reviews of three current books: “Send,”
The piece takes a brave stand against the injunction to maintain strict inbox hygiene:
My inbox is not a desk that must be cleared. It is a river from which I can always easily fish whatever needs my attention. Why try to push the river? Computer storage is cheaper than my time; archiving is easier than deleting… Do we really want the job of in-box attendant and e-mail folder file clerk? The mess is Augean scale, the job Sisyphean futile.
One other angle on this subject that I did not work into the article comes from Ducky Sherwood, who wrote books on how to handle e-mail burdens some years ago (and who also has a great resource page on all things email):
I’m a bit bothered by an implicit characterization that “email is the problem.” This isn’t fair to the medium. Your problem is that lots of people give you stuff to do. (“Read my message” falls into the category of “stuff to do”.) People have been overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that other people give them to do since long before email.
[tags]productivity, email, gtd, pims, personal information management[/tags]
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Haven’t yet read it.
“Thine” is a pronoun and not a possessive adjective. It should have been “thy.” Making a spoof musically must be done perfectly or not at all; it just sounds tacky. The same thing holds for attempting biblical grammar.
Amen! I don’t understand the popular logic that dictates that I delete my emails. Yes, at work I have various folders in my Outlook devoted to certain projects, and I’m fanatical about deleting Google news alerts (mostly unread, alas) but for the most part, email flows into my inbox where it tends to stay in case I need to reference it later. I’m a writer and I find it’s helpful to have a written record of just about everything in my life should I decide to reference it again in the future.
I hope that when somebody writes a manual on blogging ettiquette they’ll include a section on how criticisms of a writer’s linguistic choices and mastery is utterly unneccessary. ‘Not what Al Gore invented the Internet for, kids.
On the “thine” issue, there is much learned disagreement on this over in the letters at Salon. I originally wrote “thy”‘; our copy desk switched it to “thine.” Most reference sources online that I can find — admittedly none hugely authoritative — suggest that they’re essentially synonymous and interchangeable.
I’ll go with the Shakespearean precedent (“to thine own self be true”) supporting the possessive/adjectival use.
I think that emptying your inbox is part of keeping ahead of all the clutter and can help you keep organized. Right? Being organized is a personal thing and unique to each of us so I say whatever works for you!
There are some books and articles you didn’t mention @ NetManners.com that cover all these topics. I found the one on e-mail organization that also suggests to delete when possible very helpful:
http://www.netmanners.com/email-organization-tips.html
A little known fact is that the majority of our email comes from a small group of people that we work closely with and are probably sitting just a paper-clip away in the same office. This is our email ‘circle of influence’. If we want to receive less email, we have to educate this group and collectively develop better email etiquette and strategies if we are to get to grips with our burgeoning inboxes. While the authors you mention do a pretty good job at explaining the basics of email etiquette, they all fall short on coming up with workable email strategies that will effectively reduce email in a typical office environment – something I’m working on.
Tetsou
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Thank you for writing this, it’s something I’ve been meaning to blog about for a while, but now I can just point to your post.:) I very much agree that the obsession with emptying out one’s email inbox is silly and seems like a complete waste of time.
Also, if people have good enough filters set up then the inbox shouldn’t be too overwhelming anyway. As you note, filters can reroute mailing list messages to separate folders (or labels) automatically. I do this so they sidestep the inbox altogether. I also have filters set up for certain groups of people in my networks. This way, when I check messages from these various types of people, I am in a certain mode and can handle all of the correspondance at once.
I have been using a little gem from a management newsletter originally meant for snail mail, but works just as effectively for any form of communication. It is called TRAF, each thing you come across should either be Tossed, Referred, Acted on, or Filed. You should not have to deal with each individual item more than once! If you keep this mind set your in-box, whether it be e-mail or snail mail can be kept in check.
To me, “inbox” means “unviewed”.
Many years ago, before I got “organized”, I had one of those “mail slots” in my front door, and mail would go on the floor instead of in a mail box. I would leave it there, just picking up the most interesting stuff, magazines I’ve been waiting for or books I’ve ordered, occasionally managing to pay a bill on time but often having reminders sent to me. It was a burdensome “river”, right there on my floor, filled with ads and junk mail.
I don’t want to go fish all the time.
Is it it spam or unwanted mail? Remove it, bayes-report it, unsubscribe, filter.
Is it something you can reply to within minutes? Reply, then move to archive.
Is it just FYI? Move to archive.
Is it something you need to do but can’t do within minutes? Move to “actionable”, or flag it and archive it, or what works for you.
And “inbox” means only “unprocessed”.
Kate: Moving things from your inbox doesn’t have to mean deleting.
Thy/Thine: “Thy” is to “thine” in the second person as “my” is to “mine” in the first person. Prefer “Empty thy inbox”.