One Inbox Reduction Strategy

Stella has really been trying, gentle readers. Really, I wanted to keep my inbox pure, containing only items that actually fresh and awaiting action, not those which are malingering and making me feel guilty. I've got mail folders for my major and minor projects, and I've really made an effort to put things there rather than let them stew in my inbox.

And I've failed.

I have been getting nasty messages from the Outlook administrator that my mailbox is over size, and I decided to do something about it today. I've found one way to make things more sortable and file-able: I lined the contents of the inbox up by sender name. It turns out that each person emails me about one or two specific projects that I might be working on for them, and so it is really easy to find all the stuff about the alumni directory when it's all grouped by the two or three people who are really working with me on it.

For sorting and filing, time is not as useful as sender, it turns out. And seeing all those old messages when I have it sorted by time is just kind of depressing. I'll go back to date sorting tomorrow, but right now I'm down to just fifty four items in my inbox.

I feel pretty good about that. Sad, isn't it?