I manage four different email accounts.
- Company email
Inbox: 62 items
Unread: 0
I recently cleaned this one up due to the transition to the parent company’s email system.
2. Client #1 email
Inbox: 2,286
Unread: 432
I’ve been with this client since January of 2019.
3. Client #2 email
Inbox: 1,771
Unread: 447
I’ve been with this client since May of 2020.
4. Personal email
All inboxes: 51,701
Unread: 17,897
As you can see, I am not a practitioner of “Inbox Zero.” I used to strive to have no unread items and even have white space showing at the bottom of my inbox but it’s a false dream. I think I read an article awhile back that stated it was actually more efficient to leave everything in your inbox and search for what you need instead of wasting time categorizing emails into folders. I still need to use folders for my client because eventually I zip categories of emails to be saved for historical purposes.
Email is getting used and abused now more than ever because of all the remote working. There have been several cases where I created documentation templates to organize and capture decisions that were part of various email threads. Email is a great hammer but it shouldn’t be used for things that are not nails.