How many unopened work emails?

9141 but they do auto archive at 12 or 18 months and drop off. I used to file them and faff about but realised I was spending time that I could use better.
If it’s urgent I’ll see it and action, the rest sit forever.

6186 as I type. They are archived after six months. I don’t file emails. I do delete them as and when. And I do use the Search facility extensively.

Good god. Some of these numbers are giving me hives. If I get over 30 I get cold sweats. And over 100 would be panic attacks. I try to keep it in single digits but tends to hover in the mid teens.

One of my fellow directors has a couple of thousand and I honestly don’t know how they do their job.

I’ve 510 unread in my inbox and 8600 in my deleted folder.

A lot of whole school out that aren’t necessary but just in case, an annoying number of reply all thank yous and a good number that I know have nothing to do with me from the first lin

This thread makes my teath curl…

I Have a ‘zero inbox policy’

Emails get archived, put on my ‘to do list’  or dealt with straight away, simple as that.

None for two main reasons.

1: It’s my preferred contact method as it is easy to track. Also it is my job!

2: I have a strange aversion to having little red numbers on my screen. Really don’t like it.

Zero, it’s a point of pride, but 400+ flagged because I don’t consider them dealt with until I get a reply, at which point it’s too much hassle to go back and unflag the original email.

Chap I emailed the other day  clearly has a rule set which when he is CC’d says as “I am CC’d I am assuming no response is required from me so don’t expect one. “ I might copy that idea.

Oh and it’s a “none” from me, I have rules and filters to deal with all the crap and then right click, mark all as read , works for me…😎

Zero when I left this evening, probably 1or 200 by the morning.

Not all of them need reading though…

meh, emails are so before covid, its all teams and slack these days

9,124

1500 ish.

i did see something a while ago going on about the cost of emails (and AI) sat in data servers and the impact on local water supplies. It wasnt good reading.

~600 but it’s be been like that for many years

meh, emails are so before covid, its all teams and slack these days

Teams is shit though. It is basically WhatsApp or messenger. Read something then forget all about it. Email combined with a Monday board is great. Teams is bad for tracking and evidencing.

899

Zero (or given the time probably 10-20).

Thats ignoring the ones which I have rules to just stick into “might scan a couple of times weekly whilst in a pointless meeting” folders and those into folder “when i have run out of better things to do in a boring meeting i might review but in reality I will just mark as read monthly).  However the former are the ones I am routinely copied into such as code review requests which auto includes all the senior developers and my rule checks I am not specifically mentioned and the latter are just pointless crap that are supposed to make us feel “engaged”.

Yeah I tend to leave if I’m only CC’d in, then archive it once someone else has responded

550 in my personal.

Not really got a ‘work’ one a such currently.

0.

But then I’m self employed and the only people who email me are my accountant.

Teams is shit though. It is basically WhatsApp or messenger. Read something then forget all about it. Email combined with a Monday board is great. Teams is bad for tracking and evidencing.

We have comms at work guidance…

In person if it’s important enough to interrupt someone’s work and/or needs a collaborative response. Don’t just ask a question that you could look up yourself – your work/time is not more important or valuable than anyone else’s

Phone, as above if you’re not located in the same place.

Email if it is informational or enduring. Don’t use for conversational type stuff. Remember it can be produced in court. Don’t use for personal stuff.  Make sure it’s got an appropriate security classification on it

Team chat/channels – literally chat. Don’t use for recording project decisions or anything enduring.

Project/business related documentation must be in an appropriate document repository or wiki and classified.

Email if it is informational or enduring. Don’t use for conversational type stuff. Remember it can be produced in court. Don’t use for personal stuff.  Make sure it’s got an appropriate security classification on it

What if you’ve got a really funny joke from FaceBook that you just have to share?

I used to have around 2000 unopened work emails but I always had preview turned so none of them were important and unopened.

your work/time is not more important or valuable than anyone else’s

Interesting but not quite true. I was often asked questions for a second time by senior colleagues. They could trawl back through emails/chats or meeting minutes to not have to ask me again, as it was not their specialist field but they knew I could remind them without breaking stride. Of course there is a limit to how much you should do this but organisations would grind to a halt if they couldn’t be flexible about this. I would do the same with members of my team who were more expert in certain fields and carried this information at the forefront of their heads… Working in IT I would expect the CEO to occasionaly ask for a reminder on our password policy for example. Her time was literally more expensive that one of my tech team on the SD.

A former boss ticked over 100,000 unopened mails a few years ago. He is the most effective manager I’ve worked for and one of the most productive people I’ve worked with. We were at an agency, and my team worked across dozens of clients – most people had five, tops, and I think I ended up doing stuff for about 15. It meant a lot of client service spam in our inboxes which we could mostly filter and ignore.
I was doing some work with another director of that business with my laptop hooked up to a meeting room screen. Outlook showed 3,500 unread mails. They said something along the lines of it being unprofessional and every email should be opened and read, which was ‘how they did it’. I hit Select All and then Mark As Read. The sharp intake of breath was absolutely worth it. Explaining I did that about once a month when the little number in the corner started to tick me off was even better.

Oh, yes, I remember work emails. Happy days.

About 3000, so far.

Yahoo email, 100k+, they’re all spam.

none, I keep up with mine.

Probably get about 130 a day. Use filters to get rid of most of the crap, spend a bit of time each day reading & filing or responding to what I need to or deleting what I don’t want.

For those with thousands of unread, how many are you getting a day in order to be missing them?

Those ignoring CC’d emails – 😂🤣😂

You are actually supposed to read them, or at least skim it. There might be detail in there that you need to know or would be helpful for you to know, that’s why you’ve been copied.

I’m work a rota so when i go back after a few weeks off i am unlucky if i get more than 150 mails to go through, most of which go straight into the junk. Spend about an hour sorting out the rest because if i dont I’ll forget.

As it stands I dont think I’ve any unread mails but I doubt I get anywhere near the amount some of the folk in this thread get as we tend to speak to people rather than mail them.

You don’t need to read an email to know if you needed to read it or not, the message preview is often enough.

Most of the 162 unread emails in my work inbox are just ‘thanks’ or ‘not yet, will send soon’ or just a conversation chain between a colleague and another that i am fully happy and confident for them to manage without my input – it is for tasks i have delegated to them which i don’t need involved in until there’s a complete product or an issue which they’ll bring to my attention directly.

Although I’m an advocate for a clear inbox, and it starts to make my shit itch if I’ve got over 30 to deal with, I do wonder if we’re the fools, and by being slaves to the inbox it creates a perpetual cycle. I have planned days in the office to complete particular tasks, and can end up getting few or none of them done due to continuous emails.

I tend not to answer the phone, and don’t return missed calls – I only respond to voicemails, if I think it necessary. Perhaps I ought to try and apply that to emails.