Quote Originally Posted by Almost Done View Post
Am I beyond help?
No, it's fine.

I don't think it's necessary to delete old emails. Disk space is cheap. You can just store them forever, or store them and delete them after a few more years. What's important is how you spend your time.

I don't like to delete email, so I don't. I put it into folders where it's
automatically deleted after various periods of time.

You can decide how much time you want to spend on email on a regular
basis, and what benefits you want to get out of it.

You can move your backlog into backlog folders that you might get to later.

You can get a handle on the emails that are coming in on a regular basis now.
You have several choices: either
(1) Spend more time on email regularly, or
(2) Get people to send you fewer emails -- for example, unsubscribe from listservs, or
(3) Handle some of your emails automatically, for example, putting all the emails
from one listserv into a folder which you can just totally ignore if you feel like it, or
(4) Handle your email faster, for example deciding on the basis of the subject
line that an email probably isn't very important and moving it to a folder where
it will be automatically deleted in a year if you don't get around to reading it, or
(5) Make sure nothing important comes in by email: warn people that if
they need to get through to you they need to use snailmail or phone, or
(6) some combination of the above, or
(7) some other clever idea, or
( Continue to have a bunch of unread emails that might contain something important.

I do the email-0 thing at work and I really like it. I haven't gotten to that in
my personal email yet, but am planning to.

You don't have to read all your emails. You can just scan the subject
lines and who they're from and figure out whether there's likely to
be anything important in there. If not, move it to a folder that you
can confidently ignore.

You can even email a few people
telling them that you haven't had time to read their last few emails
and to email you again (or phone or something) if you missed
anything important -- although that might result in even more
emails coming in!

If you can't handle the emails at the rate they're coming in now,
then something needs to change.

What categories of emails, if any, might be actually important? Can
you have those automatically recognized and directed to a specific
folder that you read first -- and then reading the rest becomes
optional?

Likely, for you, reducing the number of incoming emails will
be a very helpful strategy. You can just ask people to send
fewer emails. (Emailing them to ask them this, of course ...)

Email is supposed to help you. Figure out what you want it
to be like, and then change it to be like that.