Inbox size

[ewx]

[Poll #1241657]

(Memory and browser history strongly imply I've done this poll before, but I can't find the actual poll...)

Comments

[tigerfort.livejournal.com]

Although that's inboxes plural. And doesn't include the inbox on one of my home machines that I just use to slurp one of the others to when the account gets short on space. Technically it's an inbox; actually, it's an archive.

[lnr]

2 in my chiark inbox
7 in my gmail inbox
10 5 in my work inbox

The chiark ones need replying to, the gmail ones are mostly stuff I need to refer to in the immediate future (holiday and train bookings, house buying related), the work stuff is mostly the latter sort (though work-related obv). Actually a few of those were a conversation on my current project which I thought I might need to contribute to, but it's now resolved, so I've filed those.

[j4.livejournal.com]

chiark inbox: 6
earth.li inbox: 0
work inbox: 65 (slowly whittling down from hundreds)

I am aiming for across-the-board Inbox Zero. Getting there, slowly.

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

Inbox Zero at work. I've never understood using the inbox as a filing cabinet.

Mind you, I had one boss who'd been using Outlook's 'Deleted Items' folder as an archive for years and got very upset when it was, er, deleted...

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I've heard of people using 'trash' directories for long-term storage too. Completely baffling.

[nja.livejournal.com]

I narrowly avoided deleting months of someone's work once - it was in a directory called 'temp', and I assumed that emptying it was a good way to free a few gigabytes of space on a full disk.

My inbox has 138 items, all read. If there's something that needs dealing with later I move it to a folder called "to do", and anything older than a week gets shifted to an archive (which goes back about ten years). I regularly see colleagues with hundreds of unread emails - one (thankfully now departed) used to let them pile up for weeks and then deal with them all at once, so I'd get replies to half a dozen urgent enquiries on a Sunday afternoon six weeks after I had found out the information by ringing her secretary.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

If you'd asked that question at the beginning of last week, it would have been 10000+. Now it's 0.

[dave holland (from livejournal.com)]

99 at home, 506 at work - mostly things I want to keep handy in case I need to deal with them, until they cease to be important, at which point I'll delete or file them.

Inbox Zero is a great idea and I keep trying to get better at doing it.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

I included marked spam that's not actually been deleted, and all my smart folders which are views. I suppose I could move those messages elsewhere. I'll get round to it at some point.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

9904 at this moment in time. So close!

Not that it's anything to be proud of, ahem...

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

Out of interest, are you still keeping a print archive of your email correspondence, or did you give that up a decade ago?

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

A long time ago. :-)

Mind you, I do have a directory called old-mail with subdirectories called ox-read-mail and ox-sent-mail, with files dating back to 1995, and my current inbox has mail in from 1997. I'd be tempted to switch to GMail or similar if I were confident about being able to import and export close to 1 GB of mail.

[baljemmett.livejournal.com]

Currently about 2,800 in the 'work' inbox and 300 in the 'personal' inbox. When I migrate to my new workstation (maybe tomorrow) I'll be changing how I organise my mail a bit, since the current scheme is over ten years old and now wildly inappropriate in places!

[totkat.livejournal.com]

Using Google Apps, so I have no need to use folders; just tag, star or delete.

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

~35 in work inbox (it acts as my todo list)
~1500 in personal inbox (argh!)

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

Answering for my work inbox (84), because the question doesn't make much sense for my home inbox (2726) because it's GMail and it uses tags rather than folders, so I never really move anything out of my inbox.

I'm not sure I get the point of Inbox Zero.

What's the point?

[rmc28]

For me personally, it's helping me spend less time hunting for things I still need to do, and more time just getting them done. I find it far less stressful to only see in my inbox(es) the emails that still require action of some kind.

[reddragdiva]

I did a major "archive" run on my Gmail and have 70-odd emails read, none unread.

[kaet.livejournal.com]

One it turns out when I started my mailer. Now probably zero, but I quit it again, :).

[rmc28]

23 in home in box, 25 in Gmail, 23 in main inbox.
Now 5 at work, 13 at home. Gmail remains disaster area in need of love and attention. Maybe next week when I'm working half-time, if Charles naps conveniently.

I was at 1 & 7 earlier in the week. I am trying to decide if I want to actually have an 'Action Required' mailbox for each hat, which will allow me to reach 0 in each inbox, or whether that's wasteful window-dressing.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I keep mails that need some kind of action or reply in my inbox, I'm just very realistic about whether I'll ever act on them.

[rmc28]

Yes, I think that's the difference that reading about Inbox Zero has made to me - the realistic test.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I'm overdue for an archiving, though (i archive mail older than two months).

.... ok, my answer remains the same.

[armb.livejournal.com]

Might be 100-200. Too many, anyway.

[hotbadgerdeluxe.livejournal.com]

Getting Joe-Jobbed has a silver lining. It really helped tune my spam filter.

[hotbadgerdeluxe.livejournal.com]

Hold on - did you mean all, or unread. If all, 3009 in total, across seven inboxes. But then I use filters to redirect them to various folders. So that would be 9649.

I'm going for a lie down.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Down to 9, from 40+ after last two weeks. (Excluding things that are filed but still need some follow-up, or inherently non-urgent, like LJ notifications.)

[davefish.livejournal.com]

Our work has an across-the-board 80Mb limit on mail on the mailserver. Given that I get various bits and pieces attached to mails it does make having a big inbox difficult.

[sonicdrift.livejournal.com]

My hermes inbox just hit 10500, I really should do something about that before it all vanishes.