Being based in Israel puts you very far from “the action” of Silicon Valley. However, thanks to the Internet, my browser always opens to the San Jose Mercury News. Today, I took particular notice to Michelle Quinn’s piece about how your inbox reflects on you. Worth the read.
Then, I started to reflect on my own email habits. I hate having email in my inbox. My goal is to respond/react to whatever needs dealing with, and then just file the email away. There are many things that “I might need someday”, that I doubt will ever be looked at, but they stay filed away within my folders. Deleted items are never really deleted, even though our SysAdmin gives me a hard time about it. After much persuasion, I might agree to delete things that are over 24 months old… Desktop search tools like X1 have helped alot, since now you don’t need to be quite as organized about which folders you put things, since a good search will find you what you need. It’s a lot better than relying on memory (“Where did I file this?”) and then assume that you will find it there…
Bottom line, email does need management. It used to be easier to just have paper tucked away in folders, because there was a lot less of it, and it was often offloaded to an assistant. With email, it’s one task that an individual, regardless of rank, needs to deal with personally.
So, like many things in this tech-crazy world… it makes your life easier on the one hand, and adds yet another thing to deal with on the other. But you gotta love it!
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