I receive and send an outrageous amount of emails every day from my work address. At this point it may be worth pointing out that my hotmail address is currently totally unmanageable as well. All the emails full of useful information are lost in amongst the hundreds of emails from friends, which amount to a kind of online discussion board that exists to coordinate various important social gatherings (teh quiz), to send forth the latest humourous interweb finding (tronguy), and more generally to preserve our mutual sanity in moments of work dullness. And as another aside to this blog maybe we should have an achingbrain.net comment board for those of us who are blocked from using web-based mail / blog sites at work. The membership would of course be terribly exclusive.
So back to my inbox and its 1112 emails, all of which I have never bothered to put into folders. I had this theory that I would delete the useless ones, and then use the Outlook “Find” function to track down the useful emails when required. Sadly my inbox is now so crowded that the “Find” function is about as speedy as a snail.
So today, I have declared “Inbox management day” (please feel free to join in my celebrations). Today I am going to create folders and file my emails; I am going to blog about it before I begin.
For some time now I have considered the unsorted and unregimented inbox as the last bastion of my insubordination. I’ll explain, in my current job I am working in an industry I never expected to, my job is to organise another’s life, and frankly at times it blows. The random emails floating about in inbox space reminded me of someone who didn’t want to file for life, free and easy, floating in the wind (apologies for the metaphor overload)… As much as I would like to keep it this way, technology has scuppered my attempts, and hindered my propagation of the scruffiest inbox in the world.
So today, it’s time to accept my fate, clip my wings, and prepare myself for a life of filing. Am I sad? Well, a bit. But I suppose this is a prequel to a much longer blog I have stored up about the problems of being a member of the undefined generation (aka Generation Y). I hope my boss doesn’t know about this site.
Popularity: 22% [?]
March 22nd, 2006 at 12:17 pm
As an update, it’s now two hours after the posting and so far I’ve made myself two cups of tea, eaten a rather delicious shortbread, and read some of those emails from friends. Something about chain stores in the locale, disenchanted youth and mini-scooters. Yes, I have just spent the last hour laughing my head off…
March 22nd, 2006 at 12:58 pm
I delete as I go and try and feel proud of the fact by in box is only 7% full. In my heart of hearts I fear it maybe a metaphor for life. *sigh* back to filing
March 22nd, 2006 at 1:15 pm
It’s a problem, to be sure. I used to delete as I went on my work account, but then someone asked me for an email I received from someone outside the company six months previously. I didn’t have it and consequently much embarrassment ensued.
My inbox now has ~4000 messages in it.
Ugh.
What I think would be useful is a feature similar to Apple Mail’s smart mailboxes. Essentially they are saved search queries that are continually updated, so appear very speedy. They are similar to filters, but you can have emails be in multiple smart mailboxes without having multiple copies of the message. It’s also tied into the system wide Spotlight search, so it’s all at your fingertips.
If only the smart mailboxes were portable between different machines/webmail and it wasn’t part of an email client that apart from that isn’t very good.
It could be worse, however. If I was using Outlook without an Exchange Server, my outlook.pst file would lock up and become unusable once it topped 2GB in size. Which in today’s high speed world full of ‘funny’ video attachments isn’t that hard.
March 22nd, 2006 at 1:29 pm
ah, well see I have every email sent to my work address (bar the p0rn obviously). I’m starting to be afraid…
March 22nd, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Ah, my bad - didn’t realise you were talking about Hotmail.
You should try signing up to the Windows Live Mail Beta (a little advert/button occasionally appears beneath the folder list in Hotmail) - it’s got essentially unlimited storage (it expands as your account grows, or something), a snazzy new interface (on IE, which I very rarely am, but might be good for all you corporate desktop types), is what Hotmail will turn into eventually anyway and loathe as I am to say it, is pretty good.
March 23rd, 2006 at 12:41 pm
alex, this apple stuff of which you speak sounds remarkably like the ‘label’ system of gmail. you label emails as they come in (multiple labels can be applied to each message) and then you archive them when you’re done with them. then, say, you wish to access all emails relating to a particular subject - you can click on that label and lo and behold - all emails pertinent to the bills, or the e.d. clan, or your parents, or whatever, regardless of whether they have multiple labels. and there’s only one copy of the message. genius.
(anyone want a gmail invitation?)
March 23rd, 2006 at 12:49 pm
nooooooo!
I only refreshed the page!! mods - please delete second (and then this!) post…?
xx
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:48 pm
Done, and I’ll pass on the gmail, thanks.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:44 pm
Me!Me! I want Gmail
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:02 pm
There are only a few orignal ideas in the world, eh?
It does sound remarkably similar - once you’ve defined a label, is it possible to label incoming emails automatically or do you have to do everything manually?
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:04 pm
Gah, this fucking formatter. Textile here I come.
March 26th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
I can’t recommend gmail enough, it makes emailing a joy…
Alex - not sure it’s possible to automatically label incoming mails, but I admit I don’t really use them.
The search facility is ridiculously fast and I just use that to find mails, seems to always work.
Before you ask, I haven’t started working for Google.
April 9th, 2006 at 7:08 pm
You can label incoming emails automagically, using the gmail filter system.
Also, you can apply more than one label to each email which is good too and add a ’star’ to some, i.e. ones you want to follow up soon…