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Hopefully Teams and the like take a a front seat and push email into history.
We only adopted it during the first lockdown but I already have a substantial disliking of Teams. Maybe it'd be better if it was used differently but too many people post stuff but don't notify anyone, so then I am unaware of the thing that was an action in the thing they posted so it doesn't get done and I end up getting a chaser email to ask why I haven't done something I was unaware of.
Anyhow 1 undead email in my work inbox, which I resurrected because it was something I need to do
Zero in my personal email
I also had a clearout of my work inbox a while ago and deleted everything pre 2018, but there are still 1870 emails in there that are unfiled. Should probably do something about that too.
I could sort mine out, the new ones anyway - mostly, on the personal emails it's new music releases.
I usually go through them, but Bandcamp ones are rather numerous. I have a complete FOMO madness when it comes to new music. Tried shaking it, but to no avail.
Work is mostly auto-generated stuff from the help system. I could set up a rule, but 4 years ago, I wasn't sure if I'd need to refer back to these emails on occasion. Turns out, I don't, so I'll set up a rule now, thanks to this thread 😀
I have a system at home with all my wife's subscribed newsletters (we share a mailbox) where I start filtering them to a sub folder if they stop being opened. It makes it easier to manage
With work stuff I don't get managers who want to be CCd on things but never open them because they are too busy. You have to trust your staff and stop them CCing things to you. It isn't covering anyone's arse
so then I am unaware of the thing that was an action in the thing they posted so it doesn’t get done
I'm pretty sure you can set Teams to send you a summary of notifications you haven't responded to each day. I think it is under the notifications settings - either banner or banner and email. Teams rocks
44299 at present
Of those 99% will be completely irrelevant - things people cc'd me on I didn't need to be, automated messages from the system telling me that a document has been updated; automated reports which I only need if I want to investigate something etc. Marketing BS etc. The other 1% will phone me (or teams/slack) or send a reminder.
If on average each one of those took me 1 min to open, skim, decide what to do with, file, I would have spent 6 months of my working life reading pointless email. Thats time I can spend here instead!
Top tip - delete every single work email received on holiday.
If it's important they'll tell you in person
I get a lot of automatic ones from servers each day.
I have rules which mean they never touch my inbox and just go to a server specific folder which I very rarely look in!
62,347 unread email in my inbox
I got to 15k on my work email, marked them all as read, made no odds. Back to nearly 10k now. Identifying the ones you need to read isn't hard and a lot of them I read in the right hand panel without opening them
For those people with 10,000 unread emails and suggesting if it is important they will send a reminder - how will you spot the reminder in amongst all the other stuff you never open?
I have always managed email very well as it is a primary communication method for me. Get a few hundred a day and never have anything unread by time I finish work. I have a lot of rules running so if I get a type of emails I don't want to see (from person, from list, from title etc,.) it gets automatically sent to Deleted.
For those people with 10,000 unread emails and suggesting if it is important they will send a reminder – how will you spot the reminder in amongst all the other stuff you never open?
Email subject line (or top three lines of preview - my own team are well trained to make sure that the relevance/importance is obvious there as I'm not opening it unless it's clearly for me and asking something). Notifications on phone/desktop mean its infrequent that an email comes in without me being aware something was sent; its rare that two emails come in without getting any attention, but it does happen. If they don't get an answer they can phone, text, slack, teams me as necessary. I'm sure some people find me incredibly rude - I'm also sure I find some of the crap I get copied on an invasion of my time. Some people's email will more likely get attention just from who they are.
I also generally don't bother accepting meeting invites which really seems to upset people!
I’m not able to upload screenshots as proof but Mrs LDM is currently on 252973, gives me the willies!
Probably well over 200k, all inboxes considered. I can filter fairly effectively on sender/subject.
How much time would it take me to go through 200k emails? That's how much time I've saved myself over the years.
Personally I find it a bit odd when people get panicky about having a lot of emails, and really weird when people start using email as a measure of work.
Zero. dont get me wrong, i certainly dont read them all!! but cannot stand having unread messages in my inbox (ctrl A 'mark as read')
people with thousands, why not just delete all and start again?
anything important will be in touch again, you can deal with them as & when, one by one.
If they don’t get an answer they can phone, text, slack, teams me as necessary. I’m sure some people find me incredibly rude
I would be one of them. I send you a mail because you need to do something or are the only person who can answer. An email is an efficient way of doing that but you ignore that and then waste my time having to chase it up with another email and then eventually phone, text, slack etc,. not knowing whether you will bother responding to any of those either.
Answering a mail for something that you are accountable for would seem like the thing you should do.
I also generally don’t bother accepting meeting invites which really seems to upset people!
That is pretty ****y too. If you are not going to go to the meeting then decline it.
people with thousands, why not just delete all and start again?
anything important will be in touch again, you can deal with them as & when, one by one.
But why? Not everyone has to manage things the same way as you.
I would be one of them. I send you a mail because you need to do something
...but not in a hurry. If someone wants something done this afternoon, or tomorrow, or maybe even this week then find some other way to get in touch. (Like Teams - ugh, phone, actually seeing someone in person, chucking a paper plane across the office, whatever)
Zero
Have lots of filters to move most to specific folders/mailboxes. That sort of prioritises them for me. Some get block marked as read or deleted, others (there were two this morning) have attachments that need assessing and responding to. Only really builds up if I've been away on holiday, even then it's probably only half an hour at most to deal with a couple of weeks' backlog.
Used to get masses at work - build systems and bug tracking systems generate near spam proportions of email. Online purchase generate a lot, ordered something from CRC the other day:
one email from CRC to confirm order
one email from Hermes to say they are awaiting delivery of the order
one email from CRC to say it's been dispatched
one email from Hermes to say they have the package
one email from Hermes to say it's out for delivery
one email (yet to arrive) to say it's been delivered.
The only one that needs to stay on my computer is the first, even then I could just look at my account history on CRC, the rest can be deleted once the package arrives.