Of Inboxes and Men
I’ve been thinking about email inboxes lately. It all started with AOL and ”You’ve Got Mail“. After that, people were left to themselves to figure out what to do with all of that email. I’ve come to realize that people can get lumped into four categories:
- The “My Inbox Has Got to be Empty” people… People that fall into this group labor all day long to keep their inbox empty. They eschew the outside world. They often work late. They skip lunch. All for the sake of keeping the inbox completely devoid of any new messages. A sub-category of this group are people who don’t actually read and reply to everything, but instead, just sort everything into different folders either manually or automatically using rules. Interestingly, many people in this sub-category forget to look in the folders to find their new email.
- The “My Inbox is My To-Do List” crowd… These people, myself included, use the inbox as a tool. As emails are responded to and action taken, emails are deleted. Those that require action at a later time remain in the inbox. I typically have between 15 and 40 emails in my inbox. This system works very well for me, and frankly, I just don’t understand why everyone doesn’t operate this way…
- The “700 Club”… These people rarely delete anything from their inbox, except maybe spam. Everything stays in the inbox until they reach 700 emails. Then they go in and delete everything more than a month old. The cycle repeats over and over. My wife is in the 700 Club; it drives me nuts. If something doesn’t immediately get responded to, then it quickly fades out of view and is forgotten… Not a good idea at work.
- The “Mass Storage Device Inbox”… These are a fairly rare breed. In fact, I only discovered their existence last week while in a meeting with representatives from one of our suppliers… This guy had a 5,679 emails. In his inbox! I was floored when I saw that. It took him 5+ minutes (in a meeting…) to find the attachment he was looking for. As he was fishing for the right email, I noticed many emails that were 3, or more, years old. My professional advice for people in this area is to seek help from a certified counselor. I bet this drives the IT people crazy since he requires his own 1 TB server…
Leave a comment: Which kind of inbox are you? Have you seen any other interesting species?
Good post! I fall into #2 category. Except, I usually have around 200 emails (one week’s worth) in my Inbox at all times and I archive 6 months worth. I found early on that if I delete emails it comes back to bite me because most of the time that’s my primary mode of communication and I usually need proof of what was said regarding situations.
My advisor at KU is a #4 kind of guy. Literally 5000+ emails in his Inbox and many of them never read over years… crazy.
I won’t be a slave to my email, but it is a good workflow tool.
I’m definately #4… but I’ve got gmail. I’ve had gmail for a very long time now. I can go back to emails from 2004 if i want to.
I have almost 2.200 in my inbox and 3,400 emails in all of my folders (minus spam) total. I am using almost 1.2GB of my 7.3GB available.
Maybe you should add an alternate name to number 4 as “gmail hoarders.” The big sell with gmail is “why delete emails? just keep them all, and be able to search all of your emails at once.” I take advantage of this.
i am a #2 as well. The only thing I archive is my sent items that way I can prove I handled something if problems arise.
What about the people who forward their emails on to others to get out of doing work. Silly stuff that could be answered with a short sentence. We could call these people “My Inbox Improves My Delegation Skills”
Or the worst of them all…the “I Will cc: Everyone I Know With This One Because It Makes Me Feel Important” When I get included in this event and am copied throughout the entire conversation, my office mysteriously hears the weirdest of pages.
Great comments!
Eron - I was thinking of this from a work standpoint. My personal email inbox (yahoo…) is 425 message + personal folders… I don’t know how many GB’s total. Yahoo stopped tracking it when they went to unlimited mailboxes.
I definitely archive everything for a year at work though… Comes in handy.
Maybe I’ll take a stab at email etiquette next week… Hit the delegation comment and the “you suck; please advise” emails that I see at work.
[...] much contemplation the Mind of MandoRon has developed four categories of people according to their approach to email. Which one are [...]
I am that rare breed number 4. I like to just leave things accessible so I can refer back to them at any time. It works for me. It’s why “search” was created as far as I’m concerned.