I have 3 inboxes

[silverflight8]

in my personal life (for purposes of not crossing the streams) and at work, 2-3 (personal inbox, team group box, team task box etc - actually for the latter there's actually 2+1 but I don't usually work out of the other 2). I get a LOT of email. Especially on former team where my personal inbox was on a group distribution list, so every morning was 100+ emails and it just kept climbing. In this system you either develop some kind of way to cope or you drown utterly and miss important things, so my main strategy is "file anything that has been dealt with". So I have the No Scroll Ideal - i.e. empty inbox probably impossible, because I leave stuff in there as reminder/for easy reference in the future. But I should be able to look at it all without scrolling. And if something needs to twitch at the corner of my vision until I do it, I mark it unread.

My fandom email is pretty quiet, but my personal one is terrible these days, probably because I get Real Life Important Stuff to it sometimes, or friends' emails that require typing (and mobile typing is The Worst). I unsubscribe from stuff I don't want, and I'm liberal with the delete/archive function, so every email in my inbox is something to look at. My terrible to-do list. So stuff can stagnate there for so...so...long. Even though if I sat down for 30 mins I could clear 99% of them. It's just that it's much more entertaining for my monkeybrain to continually swipe down on my gmail inbox and see something new and shiny pop in.

Comments

[eustacia_vye28]

I do the same thing with my inbox! I leave it marked unread until I deal with it, and sometimes it can take a month or two to get to it. ^^;

[silverflight8]

I couldn't keep them unread - that would drive me up the wall. But I'm glad I'm not the only one!!

[candyspacehip]

I have this problem as well. Every once in a while I go through and clear out, but I quickly accumulate um... thousands of emails in my personal box? Because monkeybrain. And then I am too lazy to delete them and want to keep them for reference. Plus the whole "more focused on shiny new emails" thing.

And work is a zillion emails. I'm really trying to keep those deleted or shoved off into another file asap or I'm missing stuff.

[silverflight8]

THOUSANDS?! omg nooooo

I was away for 3 business days this past week and I came back to 1500 emails. I had to spend an hour filing and making sure no one tried to email me directly (woe, I forgot to put my out of office up)

AGREE, new emails are shiny. Even if they turn out to be emails that then require work. Nothing takes away the little rush of OH NEW THING SHINy