Email Bankruptcy
Yesterday I realized that I had over 3000 messages in my Gmail Inbox, and that the items that needed action (replies, etc) were being buried in the pile. It was time to declare email bankruptcy. So I clicked on “Select: All”, and then clicked the option to select everything in my Inbox. Then I clicked the “Archive” button. Voila! It’s all gone. Then I created a new label called “@Pending” (the @ symbol is to make it get listed first alphabetically). I went through the archive and found the stuff that needed action, adding it to the “@Pending” list. I’ve now got a sparklingly empty Inbox and a pending list of 14 things that need my attention. When new messages come in, I’m forcing myself to decide immediately whether it requires action, and if it doesn’t, whether I’m going to archive or delete. I can already feel the psychic benefits of being so organised; it’s like a big source of guilt has been removed just by hiding all those old messages. I recommend it!
Important Note
This site features content going all the way back to 2000. The posts you’ll read reflect my views and writing style at the time. While I have gone back to clean up a few of them, I think it’s important not to sanitise too much. This site is a record of who I am and how I’ve grown. Any blog post written years ago may not reflect who I am today, nor how I would write about the same topic today.
Comments
5 responses to “Email Bankruptcy”
I am very much stealing this idea, thank you!
Hrm
I take it you deleted the yum cha invite i sent through facebook For this Saturday, we’ll be at Marigolds from 10.30am onwards. Give me a text/call if you’re coming 🙂
No, that’s in my pending list! 🙂
Ha, someone’s just read “Getting Things Done”!
Actually I read it a few months ago, and I got all fired up to make lots of changes… and I’ve still yet to make. The e-mail thing was mostly prompted by reading this at Daring Fireball yesterday.