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Can't understand the inbox zero (or in this case, inbox ten) crowd. What's so hard about letting the useless sludge fall off the bottom of your screen, neither

Can't understand the inbox zero (or in this case, inbox ten) crowd. What's so hard about letting the useless sludge fall off the bottom of your screen, neither read nor deleted? My "Inbox" at work has 65,580 unread items at this moment. This does not cause me any kind of stress or burden.

jmduke 14y ago
It definitely stresses me the hell out. More pragmatically, its a lot easier to know from a glance what happens when your inbox grows from 0 to 30 rather than 65,580 to 65,610. In all honesty, though, its mainly the irrational stress -- but irrational stress is still stress.
- Swizec 14y ago
  Why is that different? What happens when a server starts acting up and you are flooded with 10 error emails per second. Will you go click through all of them even though they're essentially the same? That can cost you an hour of your time, easily. Ok you can write a filter and automatically mark them as read. Which still costs you at least 10 minutes of your time. Or you could just ... not care. This costs you 0 minutes of your time. You merely mentally update the "zero" of your inbox.
  - jmduke 14y ago
    Ctrl+A + E. (Or select all & auto-archive.) Archiving's the perfect solution to my irrational stress, because nothing's deleted, but its out of my way.
  - brown9-2 14y ago
    Seems like the "not care" tactic risks missing legit messages from someone in between the flood of alerts.
pbiggar 14y ago
It's not about having items in your inbox, it's about having control over your task list. I get anxious when I randomly remember all the things I have to do, and writing them down and organizing them helps me. For mail, I categorize things as "action", "waiting on", "follow up". Inbox means "uncategorized". Doing this means I can manage my email load without going insane.
losvedir 14y ago
I think it comes from using your Inbox as a to-do list. If your "action emails" are drowning in 60,000 other emails it's tough to know what to do. I'm guessing you use some other system for to-dos?
- ollysb 14y ago
  Using email as a task lisk sounds like a nightmare. The equivalent pen and paper version would be people doodling all over your list whenever you weren't looking. Do yourself a favour and use something like trello.

jmduke 14y ago

It definitely stresses me the hell out. More pragmatically, its a lot easier to know from a glance what happens when your inbox grows from 0 to 30 rather than 65,580 to 65,610. In all honesty, though, its mainly the irrational stress -- but irrational stress is still stress.

Swizec 14y ago
Why is that different? What happens when a server starts acting up and you are flooded with 10 error emails per second. Will you go click through all of them even though they're essentially the same? That can cost you an hour of your time, easily. Ok you can write a filter and automatically mark them as read. Which still costs you at least 10 minutes of your time. Or you could just ... not care. This costs you 0 minutes of your time. You merely mentally update the "zero" of your inbox.
- jmduke 14y ago
  Ctrl+A + E. (Or select all & auto-archive.) Archiving's the perfect solution to my irrational stress, because nothing's deleted, but its out of my way.
- brown9-2 14y ago
  Seems like the "not care" tactic risks missing legit messages from someone in between the flood of alerts.

pbiggar 14y ago

It's not about having items in your inbox, it's about having control over your task list. I get anxious when I randomly remember all the things I have to do, and writing them down and organizing them helps me. For mail, I categorize things as "action", "waiting on", "follow up". Inbox means "uncategorized". Doing this means I can manage my email load without going insane.

losvedir 14y ago

I think it comes from using your Inbox as a to-do list. If your "action emails" are drowning in 60,000 other emails it's tough to know what to do. I'm guessing you use some other system for to-dos?

ollysb 14y ago
Using email as a task lisk sounds like a nightmare. The equivalent pen and paper version would be people doodling all over your list whenever you weren't looking. Do yourself a favour and use something like trello.