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Inbox - let the river flow, but bring a paddle

An interesting article in Salon about whether or not it’s wise to spend time cleaning out an overburdened in box.

My work in box has over 3,000 emails in the inbox (not my fault). Combined w/ the mountains of paper filing, well, it makes me tired just thinking about it.

The article sold me on the wisdom of not worrying about cleaning out my in box with this quote:

Computer storage is cheaper than my time…

That really gave me pause. My time is finite. Not just as far as what I contribute to my job, but as far as how I spend my life. There’s no reason to be this tired and cranky. At least not every day.

It’s a Mac, so the email has a brilliant search feature. And, considering all the paper filing I have to contend w/, I have to face the fact that going through each email and putting in it’s proper category is never, ever going to happen.

But then I read some of the letters people had sent in about the article and one guy nailed it - it’s too hard to keep track of what needs your attention when the in box is full. Things get lost, clever search feature or no.

His letter inspired me: everything dated prior to my start date is getting put into a folder called “Old”. Since I’ve sorta been filing things as they come in (though not religiously) this leaves me w/ only a month or so of email to sort through.

I also cleaned my office quite a bit today, and got some daily crap done. There’s still tonnes of filing, but I have to accept it’s a long-term job that’ll require an hour each day instead of many hours each day while other things get neglected.

As of tonight, when I left the office at 10 p.m. (*sigh*), the floor is free of strewn about files (my fault - I’m cleaning out the filing cabinets) and my desk is clean. The one in the above photo is adjacent to my desk and is my crap holding place.

I feel much better.

I think your plan sounds good.

I can hardly wait to see you! Be prepared for hot weather, though.

It’s gonna get to 33 here today. God, I miss winter.

That sounds like a good email filing plan.

Other than a couple of major things (like email from my students), I periodically file everything in my inbox to monthly archive mailboxes. Every computer can search now. Some of the newer email programs (and services, like gmail) allow you to tag emails for easier searching.

A couple of years ago I was at a seminar where one speaker was a so-called “youth consultant.” He talked about search techniques. When I go to the library looking for a book on, say, European history pre-colonialism, I use the library system to start broad an get specific — say, history, then European history, then the time period I’m interested in. The kids today favour specific searches, conditioned on Google.

I take the same attitude to email. Why categorize it when I can search through it at the blink of an eye?

Well, sometimes what I’m searching for yields too many results, you know?