What does one do with 3,669 unread emails?
January 26, 2009This seems to be an inordinate number of unread emails, and these emails all sit unread in my inbox. I told myself that I would clean the cobwebs out of my inbox and start fresh for 2009, but that hasn’t happened yet. I find myself holding on for some reason.
So what am I holding onto? What’s in my inbox?
- My oldest unread email is from July 9, 2007, and it’s from eBay with checkout instructions for a dress I purchased.
- I have various emails from Facebook: Someone added me as a friend. Someone replied to a thread. Someone wrote me a message. Someone commented on my status. Someone commented on my photos. All of these emails came before I learned how to change my email notification settings.
- Lots of Daily Candy emails. I love the unique shopping finds, but 2 emails a day really add up … to me not having time to read all of them.
- Various order confirmations and shipping notifications. Thanks, I got it - whatever it was.
- Emails from friends and family, especially if “FW:” or a large amount of exclamation points (!!!!!!) were in the subject line. (Side note: I hate forwards. AOL and Microsoft are NOT giving money away, Mom. No video will appear when I forward this to 10 people, dear friends. I will not be killed by Mexican gang members if I shop at Walmart, but thanks for caring, Dad.)
It really irks me, seeing that number of emails listed in my inbox. Part of me is reluctant to archive these messages because I feel like I’m missing something. Another part of me - the same part of me that doesn’t check voicemail regularly ever more than once a month - feels like there was a clear reason I didn’t open these emails when they came in. Whatever was in the subject line didn’t seem urgent or important at the time.
Time is a precious commodity, something limited in quantity. I don’t like it when people waste my time, and I don’t like wasting other people’s time. But there’s a fine line here: In an age where it takes 10 seconds to rattle off an email, one has to be quick to judge what’s important enough to dedicate part of your life to or what should be skipped over. I’ve always figured if it’s truly important, people will call as a backup. Or hit me on Facebook.
What should I do with the unread emails in my inbox? Archive them? Simply ignore the ever-increasing tally on the side of my screen? What do you do to manage your inbox?
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Hi, Kendall! I’ve been enjoying your blog. Unread emails really bother me, too, so I always click “select unread=>mark as read” after I’ve read the important stuff and before I go on about my business. Pat, on the other hand, has an unread email total rivaling yours. It drives me nuts.
If I were you (or if I were allowed to putz around in Pat’s email), I’d go through page by page and mass select all the unread ones, marking them as read. If you actually scroll through before marking as read, you can be sure that you’re not missing anything important (but you probably got the important stuff on the first pass anyway).
I don’t mind letting extraneous emails just sit there, as long as they’re not “unread.” When they’re in bold type, with a big number, I feel like I ought to read them, which would be a huge drain on my time! I can ignore them once I’ve marked them as read.
Good luck!
One thing I did was archive my Daily Candy emails and create a folder for them. Now I’m just trying to decide to with the remaining 3,075 emails in my inbox.
The thought of scrolling through 799 pages of emails to mark them as read doesn’t sound so hot.
Perhaps more archiving with labels and folders?
Are we talking Gmail, here? Gmail lets you see 100 emails at a time, and select all unread with one click. A quick scroll-through will tell you if you’re missing anything important, then with one more click, you can mark as read.
Good luck!