I'm one of those people with a bajillion unread emails -- 15,615 at the moment, but I feel like this is manufacturing a problem I don't have. Inbox zero or whatever does nothing for me. Here's like a sample of things I haven't bothered to click: "YMCA membership survey", "Recommended coursera courses", "grubhub order", "Mailing list update for a blog I read sometimes". These aren't really things I feel any sort of pressure to read, but I haven't put in a filter on them either because sometimes I want to see them. They're not really blocking me from seeing my important emails.
This notion that I'm "bad" at email or that I need to "do" something about this; why would I want to fix something that's working pretty much exactly how I want?
I could go mark them read even though I haven't read them and don't momentarily care to, but that only holds value to me if you assume that I view my unread email counter like some sort of unfinished task list -- which I don't. It's literally just a measure of things I haven't read. It means nothing to me.
If that system works for you, great! For a lot of people it doesn't, hence all the praise for Inbox Zero.
You're allowed to have your own system for managing e-mail, just like you can put your pencils wherever you want on your desk. Or hey, let's be crazy! You can even have no pencils on your desk!
I think this piece is for people for whom e-mail is a chore and for whom it is common practice to stare blankly at their inbox thinking "Oh, I should just reply...." and then spend an hour to write "OK" in the reply. If you're good at e-mail already then awesome.
Hmm. The problem with that approach is that among many things that mean nothing in your inbox, there are some that are quite meaningful. And these have the potential to get lost among the noise.
They don't get lost -- I'm quite literally saying this is not a problem for me. I have no intention of prescribing how other people should organize their email, because I can't imagine any universe where I would actually care about that, but this extremely long winded essay about how the way I'm doing it is wrong strikes me as absurd. I also think it's pretty weird someone would take the time to diagnose my apparent character flaws based on my email habits, and then propose solutions. Uh, thanks? Of all the world's problems focusing on why some people leave email unread seems borderline OCD.
Not to mention that a lot of the author's inferences are pretty insulting. "This means that when someone asks you to do a thing, you probably aren’t going to do it. You’re going to pretend to commit to it, and then you’re going to flake out when push comes to shove. You’re going to keep context-switching until all the deadlines have passed." Wow, really, you got all of that because I didn't bother to hit "Mark Read" on my grubhub order confirmation?
Many people have a legitimate problem handling their email and drop things on the floor they wish they didn't. It doesn't sound like you're one of those people, so the article wasn't for you, and that's fine.
For me _personally_, I archive the unimportant emails (like a grubhub order) so I don't waste time scanning over it next time i check my email. If I never archive it, I might end up scanning over it several times for no reason, and with keyboard shortcuts I can hit "x y j" once and not have deal with it again.
Your way is fine too. I just think some people really do need help being more organized and I thought the article did a pretty good job of talking about the non-technical problems many of them (but not you) have.
I would have zero issues if he was just proposing a solution to a problem that some people have, but he hasn't done that. He's suggested that using email in certain ways is incorrect and that it implies bad things about you.
"In other words: The thing you are bad at is saying ‘no’ to people. "
For fucks sake.
I'd also have no issues if this was on like the third page, but the fact it has this many upvotes suggests people agree with this, which makes me wonder: 1) WHY do you all care about other people's inbox habits? How does this impact you? Why do you even think it's your business in the least bit? 2) WHY do you presume you can actually infer anything important about a person based on that, to the point of saying some very insulting things about their character?
The author seems to believe we all inhabit the same bizarre world he does, where apparently most email is worthless, and yet your response to this apparently worthless stream of information implies many things about your character with a great deal of certainty. Like, what the fuck? Maybe there's a common sense middle ground where I get email notifications about things that don't require much action but are somewhat valuable to have, and I can read fast enough to parse the important things in a few seconds without having to spend significant time thinking about my email process.
This notion that I'm "bad" at email or that I need to "do" something about this; why would I want to fix something that's working pretty much exactly how I want?
I could go mark them read even though I haven't read them and don't momentarily care to, but that only holds value to me if you assume that I view my unread email counter like some sort of unfinished task list -- which I don't. It's literally just a measure of things I haven't read. It means nothing to me.