Gmail – Inbox (1) – janssen
Anyone who has had the pleasure of living with me for any period of time knows that I am all about “The Right Way of Doing Things.” I assure you this does not get annoying at all (family members, it might be best if you just closed this window now before your eyes get stuck from rolling them around so quickly).
You might be surprised by how many “Right Ways of Doing Things” there are. For example, silverware must be put in the dishwasher prongs down (I live in terror of a fork prong going straight up under my fingernail – you’re all very welcome for that mental image). And bread goes in the refrigerator. Give me hard bread over moldy bread every day of the week. The bed must be made every day. These things are important.
And yet, “The Right Way of Doing Things” does not stop at housekeeping. Oh no. . .it extends so much further than that. (Flee in terror while you have the chance).
Email, my friends, can be done the right way or the wrong way. I use Gmail, of course, because it’s the best. And I archive all my mail. I cannot imagine leaving emails in the inbox, with the inbox count stretching out into the thousands.
The inbox is for emails that must be attended to. Once they have been dealt with, they can be archived away, never to be remembered again until you need to retrieve them for some piece of information.
Currently, my inbox has five items in it. There is an email from my mom about a miscellaneous item, a note from my former roommate where we discuss Christmas frolicking, nerts and Carmello bars (if that’s not a worthwhile email, folks, what is?), a powerpoint presentation I need to review, an article sent by a professor, and a link to a pdf file from my mother which I have not yet downloaded as I’m fairly sure that doing so will crash my computer, seeing as it’s a huge file.
I will respond, read, and download as necessary, and then archive. And then, my inbox will be gloriously, beautifully empty. All will be right with the world.
Do you empty your inbox or do you just leave it all in there?
I found your blog post through a search for “Nerts”. It is cool to see others that know about the game. I hope you don’t mind but I wanted to let you know about playnertz.com, the site for the National Nertz Association. There is a bunch of interesting Nertz information there and you can also find out how to play Nertz online there. I hope you will check it out. Feel free to join and also let your friends and family know. Thanks
I’m with you Katherine on the email. I delete like crazy after they are no longer of use.
My gmail inbox currently has 3608 unread messages. Of course this is the account that I share with my husband and lots of ad mail comes there, etc. When I want something I just use the nifty search feature. I used to keep my inbox cleared out, then I had three children (and now have another on the way). Life is too short for me! I’m glad you are able to keep yours clean though, I would feel a little better about life if I did, but oh well!
I leave urgent things unread. Well, I read them, and them mark them unread.
I leave anything that needs a response in the inbox. This varies from 10 or so to no more than 50. The inbox CAN NOT exceed one page. I leave comments from my blog there until I can reply so sometimes it does get close to 50.
Everything else is archived. I have a folder called “active” where I put things like Amazon orders that haven’t come in and I use it as kinda a second tier inbox.
There is one sappy email from my husband that will always stay in the inbox.
oh. my. gosh. I needed to read this post. I am bad at archiving and I need to be better. Noelle sometimes helps me 🙂 Bless her!
I got such a kick out of this post! I hear ya, girl! I always put the utensils in the dishwasher pokey side down too… but my reasoning is that I figure they get cleaned better that way. I especially chuckled about your email “rightness”… it drives me crazy that my husband has a million emails in his inbox. When I asked him why he just doesn’t delete them he told me, “Because it drives you crazy.” Grr!