
Three Years of Logging My Inbox Count - struys
http://warkmilson.com/2015/05/15/three-years-of-logging-my-inbox-count.html
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cyphunk
Perhaps a recipe for disaster but I consider ignoring email count and avoiding
sorting as a form of zen. The result is you use your fallible mind to
prioritize and remember important mental threads. And if that fails often you
may find it better to improve the mind (such as taking a vacation, sleeping
better) rather than finding more tools to replace it.

Also, consider that if you are focused on quickness and efficiency that there
will be times that the communication this produces, while gratifying for you,
is disappointingly hollow for others. And it probably has an additional effect
on actual character, similar to how bar tenders form of conversation in
personal life may over time start match the chitchat form from work.

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mynegation
That is what I do as well. I leave mails in the inbox and flag those that need
action or follow-up, and unflag them when I am done. I rely on search to look
for an e-mail, There is a rule set up that moves unflagged threads older than
X to archive. What counts is not the size of inbox, but unread and flagged
count.

This works especially well for mobile clients where it is pretty inconvenient
to sort e-mail.

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scott_s
I wonder if the name "inbox" is what causes people so much stress. I don't
think of it as an actual inbox. It's just where my mail goes - all of it. I
_read_ everything, but I don't bother organizing it. Occasionally I'll mark
some message as important, or keep a few open so I can get to them later. But
most often, I don't.

Search is easy. I don't see the point in organizing my mail.

~~~
soft_dev_person
True for Gmail (and similar, I'm sure), not so true for my corporate Outlook
account where search sucks and is really slow, and has ridiculously tiny
storage allocated so I actually have to archive older messages in an actual
file...

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toothbrush
What about something like OfflineIMAP + notmuch or mu? That works for me, and
search is as good (or better) than it was for me using Gmail.

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pm215
Not all Exchange setups are configured to allow IMAP access...

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aout
Working in email right now I can tell that this data is canonical. The email
age graph is probably the most interesting.

As I interpret it, most people keep some very old mails for a period of time,
mostly because they use it often. This might be because they contain useful
information (like a password...) or because they represent a task. If it is
the latest it becomes a perpetual problem because it adds some kind of noise
from this feed of info you get everyday.

In our business we tried to separate these by either saving the useful part
and discarding the rest (highlight and save) or by putting the thread
somewhere else (in an Important category).

For all the rest it appears it is just temporary info, updates, FYIs, etc...
So we basically decided to reverse our email usage. Instead of focusing on the
inbox we left it untouched but saved everything that mattered in other panels.
We still have work to do to improve the usage but it seems promising. You can
check it at getnimb.ly if you'd like

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vilmosi
I don't understand this "Inbox Zero" stress. How hard is it to set up filters
on your email? How hard is it to swipe it away to archive it? How many emails
do you have to write a day?!

~~~
stephengillie
You're using the Gmail model, where mail has labels and gets archived. I think
a lot of people are using the other model, where email goes in folders and
gets deleted.

Living in the MS world, I struggle to use the Gmail model. I create an Archive
folder and put it as a favorite folder. When I'm done with an email, instead
of deleting it like Outlook wants, I stick it into the Archive folder. I
constantly have to check my Sent Items folder to move those into the Archive
folder as well, as there doesn't seem to be an automated way to move those
there.

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Jtsummers
[https://support.office.com/en-za/article/Introduction-to-
Aut...](https://support.office.com/en-za/article/Introduction-to-AutoArchive-
in-Outlook-d3112f36-a590-4795-9f09-e7ec292bbb80)

Right click on the folder (Sent Items in this case). Select properties, go to
the AutoArchive tab. Specify the rules (where to move it and when).
AutoArchive gets executed periodically, but you can also force it through the
File menu. File -> Info -> Cleanup Tools -> Mailbox Cleanup -> AutoArchive
(probably a faster way but that's the way I found).

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stephengillie
Ah yes, AutoArchive.

Much as how AutoRecover (Word) is not AutoSave (N++), AutoArchive is not
Archive.

Archive is the manual process of dropping your mail into another folder when
you've processed it from your inbox, in order to keep yourself organized.
AutoArchive, as the link suggests, is an automated tool that will age mail
from your archive folder (and rules-based folders) into older storage folders,
for technical reasons - folder capacity is finite, but we can make more
folders.

Confusion between the two is probably exacerbating the Inbox Zero crisis.

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katrielalex
[https://www.beeminder.com/gmailzero](https://www.beeminder.com/gmailzero)
will do this automatically for you. Together with
[https://www.followupthen.com/](https://www.followupthen.com/) it makes it
pretty easy to keep Inbox Zero.

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lamontcg
Weird.

I have 2,200+ e-mails in my inbox dating back to 2011. They're all read and
just archived and I positively give zero shits about them -- except
occasionally I do a search to find an e-mail that I got months ago (often
package deliveries or itineraries or something like that). If it scrolls off
of the page then its largely out of sight and out of mind. I didn't respond to
it, so I probably won't.

Maybe the solution is to just stop caring about them as much and be a bit more
brutal about your instant triage of if you're going to respond to them, and
how much time you need to spend responding to them?

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coherentpony
I currently have 2500 unread emails in my inbox :/

~~~
cyphunk
5287 in my inbox (not gmail, all local, no lists) and not the least bit
bothered. I treat it like a phone in perpetual silent mode.

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webrender
I feel like Google Inbox and the concept of snoozing emails helps a lot with
this. A lot of emails that lie around in one's inbox are there because other
people are blocking the task; snoozing the email allows for an "Inbox Zero"
state while pushing off priorities until their proper due date, when they can
be archived.

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ghubbard
I'm interested in reading the solutions promised in part 2.

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peteretep
The easiest is: stop using your Inbox as a todo list, and use a dedicated Todo
list system instead (like GTD). Any email that can be answered straight away
is, anything else is archived and becomes an item in your Todo ledger.

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graeme
I've trie this, but I never manage to deal with stuff once I file it. It piles
up like my inbox.

How do you deal with the dozens/hundreds of tasks that may accumulate?

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normloman
If you get dozens to hundreds of tasks to do in a short period of time, isn't
that the root of the problem?

I suspect if you get too much email, it's usually because 1. You are the boss
and insist on being CCed on everything, 2. Your job description is vauge, and
everyone sends tasks to you, or 3. Your coworkers feel like they have to
notify you of everything. All three are organizational dysfunction, and not a
technology problem.

~~~
graeme
Entrepreneur. Though I didn't mean they all arrive at once. I meant I file
them, work on something else, never process the filed stuff, and then it grows
large and overwhelming.

I stay on top of stuff sometimes, but then my main work goes slower.

I do outsource a bunch, but some things I've found difficult.

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jacobevelyn
Thanks for sharing! I use email in exactly the same way and it's very
validating to learn I'm not the only one who's so "bad" at it.

