Home + Friday's Unscientific Poll on a Tuesday: E-mail backlogs

[nanila]

We're home from two weeks of holiday in the USA. I have so many photos and so many feelings. I saw my parents. I saw a large chunk of my extended Filipino family, who brought us a dizzying array of Oreos, bags of arare, a gigantic watermelon and a lot of love. I saw my cousin, for whom Keiki is named, and whom I haven't seen since our grandfather died in 2001.

Having dropped off our horrifically jet-lagged children at nursery with warnings about naps and a lot of apologies, I return to work, and immediately foment an unscientific poll.

Poll #17660 Email, why so broken

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 42

View Respondents

How to deal with an e-mail backlog?

View Answers

Read methodically, prioritise/rank, begin replying
17 (40.5%)

Delete all, burn computer
25 (59.5%)

Comments

[rmc28]

I selected what I actually do, but the delete all, burn computer option has its appeal.

[yvi]

I don't get enough mail to not be able to just go through them systematically after two or three weeks, so there's no need for method 2 for me...

[wild_irises]

I did the opposite; selected for appeal rather than for what I actually do. I like both approaches.

[pbristow]

Option 3: Make note in diary to schedule time within the next week (or maybe two...? =:o. ) to carefully re-think one's entire email-management strategy (as it clearly has failed to deal with this particular use-case), and then apply the revised version to the current use-case, as an initial test-run.

Six or nine or twelve weeks later, read the above diary entry and think: "Huh. That was totally a thing I intended to do."

And then not worry about it.

=;o}

[castiron]

While I chose "delete and burn", my real method is a quick skim for obvious fires, and move the rest to a "deal with this later" folder. But in my workplace I can safely assume that if something was really urgent and I missed it, someone will ask me about it before it's too late.

[nanila]

Yes, Option 1 is my actual approach (& took up a lot of yesterday) but it is nice to dream of Option 2.

[nanila]

This is good to hear - at least one organisation in this world has the right approach to email!

[nanila]

TBH, I find that executing Option 1 is not all that onerous once I get stuck into it. But at the start, faced with several hundred unread messages (& that's not including the ones that get filtered into folders), Option 2 is quite appealing!

[nanila]

Ah, the old "talking to people in person" option. Currently my favourite - at work, anyway. :p

[omnipotent]

Glad ya'll made it home safely!

[nanila]

Thank you! It was a long journey (with stopover in Amsterdam). Still jet-lagged, but happy to be home.