Anyway, I’m still pretty good about returning my e-mails and I’m pretty quick at it, but it’s getting harder every year. I imagine you get more e-mail than I do, and my guess is that is the #1 factor to why you have a big problem.

I really try to keep my inboxes totally, 100% clean at the end of every day and that, while taking a bit of effort, does help keep things easier to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

Having said that, I’ve noticed more and more legit e-mail getting marked as junk, so I’ve recently been having to tinker with that so I don’t miss anything good.

One thing that almost always get’s right into the trash — those damned IKNFL conversations… ;0)

More so than any other medium probably in history, e-mail suffers from the worst time/value exchange. Meaning, you can spent 30 seconds writing me an e-mail which may take 15 minutes or more of actual typing to respond to. I can’t think of another medium like that. Not the phone, not text messaging, not in-person meetings, not even handwritten letters. All of those methods of communication require a roughly equal time commitment from each side.

More on this soon…

Anyway, I’m interested to see what you’ve got to say about it.

I just don’t have the time or motivation in the evening to write more than a few quick sentences, especially if it’s been an email-heavy day.

And when it comes to work inquiries that are one sentence long… well, mostly they get deleted. Not the sort of client I’d probably want to work with anyway.

The only difference in my case is I don’t throw out anything legitimate. Instead, it all just sits in my Inbox (or one of dozens of folders to which filters auto-dump the stuff) to remind me how far behind I am, and how I’ll never, ever catch up. So to reflect my scenario, all the spam would get dumped in the Trash, and the incoming would just keep piling up and up and up and up and…

This is why I’d love to see e-mail postage rates adopted, using a system where everyone could set their own rates. That way we could all just crank up our incoming price until the incoming mail dropped to a manageable level, and leave it there until it needed to be raised again. Hell, just for that, I’d volunteer to contribute most or all of my e-mail postage profits to charity.

But on the topic at hand, I used to have a small problem about not replying certain emails. I think I actually once marked something as unread just so I would get to it later, later ended up being 2 months later… Now one I just make practicing the inbox while at school so I have a better idea of how much time I would need to set aside to actually reply and deal with things. I could help to also break it up into multiple emails all going to one account. So that lists and such go to one account, personal stuff to one, work related to one, and finally a public addy for the world to know. Then just have them all go to one main account and be sorted into folders, so you have a bit more order to it all. But that requires too much effort initially ;-)

Best of luck with the madness!

I find that having a couple of boxes really helps me. I drag the reply to’s to a box that will get replies. I instantly delete almost all jokes, etc.

Spam filtering helps a lot. But like anything else, you need to invest the time where it matters and communication with people matters.

Consider a priority email address for the hot projects or special people.

I never have a problem responding to some kid wanting some info, but I usually answer much of it with a question … why ask me what you can find on google? If you want me to do the work for you … well, I probably won’t. On the other hand I think I have a pretty good sense when I am legitmately being asked for help by someone who needs a little. I’ve been helped by plenty of people over the years.

Don’t write the long response right off. Send a quick one back that asks a follow-up question on context, etc. Answer the second one when it comes back.

If someone asks you twelve questions, consider answering one or two and ask them if they can send them a couple at a time in the order of importance to more fully get answers. Amazing how that will get them off and running on their own.

Those are a few of my tips Mike, but like asking what people think about the real estate market and getting people who answer, you just made a withdrawl … did you already have enough deposits? It’s how the web and the world are to my way of thinking. Do unto others as … well you know the saying.

Have a great new year and you promised an update on your running …

• Change the white planes to RSS Symbols
• Change the green planes to comment bubbles
• Change my Inbox to “Google Reader”
• Add a “Marked as Read, but probably not…” sticker to the trashcan

…then you’d have a good illustration of the way I feel about my RSS subscriptions now.

This happened reguarly 10-15 times a day and usually started around 8:15am. It got old real quick.

I feel your pain on abuse of email. I eventually just turned off my email client and only checked it a few times a day. Didn’t stop him from walking over though since he was only 2 cubes away.