Last week I decided to clean up my personal email account. Not sure what exactly motivated me, but it was something that desperately needed to be done. While Gmail and Xobni provide great search functionality, is there really a reason to keep every email you receive?
Trimming my email inbox from 2200 messages to 300 proved otherwise. Many of the messages should have been deleted the first time around.
What I Discovered
A few days later I discovered this post on 43 Folders comparing the way individuals organize email to hoarding peanut shells by month or location around the house. The post sparked a thought about the way I treat snail mail vs email. Snail mail that is not important gets tossed in the trash immediately, many times without even opening. If it requires action or a response normally it is processed right away and mailed the following morning. And if the mail is deemed to be important, such as IRS important, away it goes to the file cabinet.
Now if I filed every piece of mail in my file cabinet, before long it would be overflowing with mail like my personal email account. While an overflowing inbox is not as easy to visualize, it is very unproductive and time consuming. Before cleaning out my inbox I would end up reading some of my messages three to four times before they “disappeared” from my screen. Also, since cleaning my inbox I have discovered that I do not check my email as often. The ever increasing amount of emails made me feel as if I had to check my email more frequently to process the “new messsages” I was receiving.
If you are spending a lot of time in your mailbox, it is probably overflowing and could use a little house cleaning.
