The problem with a giant inbox is that you can't use it as an effective to-do list. Stuff disappears except when you remember to go hunting for it. And the hunting can take quite a while.

For years, I had a giant inbox. Now I empty it a couple of times a day. Stuff I'm keeping but done with goes in "Old". That includes the things in my inbox that I deal with right away. Stuff I want to do something with shortly goes in "Action". Stuff I'll be referring to soon (like my latest travel booking) goes in "Reference". And for things that sit too long in "Action", I move them to "Backlog" for a rainy Sunday.

I still accept that email has neither beginning nor end. I still accept that I'll keep stuff forever, just in case. And I still accept that I'll always want to do more than I can.

It's just that keeping an empty inbox and a small active to-do list encourages me to deal with the simple things and the crap immediately. That gives me more time to focus on the stuff that I really care about. And when I want to know whether or not I've left something undone, I just look at my to-do list. That's lot less worry when I pack up for the day.

it's the number of unread messages that can kill. My inbox is also a year-long river in which I feel free to travel back in time whenever I need to. But I read/delete/ignore/respond to every message that comes in as needed. I'm amazed when I look at a colleague's inbox and see hundreds of unread messages, obviously going back weeks. How can they stand it! I also can't stand it when I send an email to someone that requires maybe 3 seconds of work on their part before they reply ("what's the date of the budget meeting?"), but they print it out and put it in a pile on their desk and respond a week later, if ever. I don't understand how those people can clothe and feed themselves.

Huge, unsorted in boxes probably work for some people. But in my experience, a lot of people with a huge in box also tend to be lax when it comes to following up on email, especially if the email is about something that's happening in the future. A message about a meeting in three weeks, or a policy change that's happening next month, gets lost and forgotten, as more current email comes in and pushes it off the main screen. And that affects me, because I have to send follow up messages or reminders.

I think searching email is overrated. If you send quick, contextual emails, it's hard to find them in a search. If I send you an email that says "I sent the papers you wanted to J", how will you find that in a search? Maybe that's why people have started sending emails that contain endless pages of quotes of other messages - I got one email recently that quoted 16 previous emails. That makes email much harder to read quickly, although I guess it makes it easier to search.

Personally, I like using folders to organize my mail. By saving items I need for reference in separate folders, I can look at my in box and immediately see what needs further action.

I brought my computer home to empty my inbox after dinner. But I felt like reading a bit before getting back to work, and decided that glass of wine you mentioned would be a better choice.

Thanks.

I have a gmail account for personal chit-chat, and another one for administrative matters and email subscriptions. The first one is entirely unmanaged, and that doesn't matter. The second one I "process" in the GTD sense so that when I open it, I only see things I need to do. It's a way of making sure that I don't lose the benefit of email reminders - not making my unreliable memory the basis of whether or not bills get paid, etc.

This just in: Headline writer flunks out of Elizabethan grammar school.

Really. It never would have crossed my mind that an empty inbox was any sort of goal for anyone. What is the point of that? How does that become a goal in itself? What does it accomplish in the real world?

The very desire to achieve that suggests to me an inability to deal with and organize information in your own head. Is it really hard to remember what you've read or responded to? I average 50-100 emails a day on three accounts and I delete only that which is irrelevant and which I know I'll have no use for.

Keeping it, on the other hand, allows you to remember and re-find topics you discussed or worked on, and for those of us that have to track and bill our time, allows you to reconstruct what you were doing at a given time.

Thine is fine because the sound that follows is a vowel. Cf. "Mine eyes have seen the glory."

The very desire to achieve that suggests to me an inability to deal with and organize information in your own head. Is it really hard to remember what you've read or responded to? I average 50-100 emails a day on three accounts and I delete only that which is irrelevant and which I know I'll have no use for.

I could not disagree more. You get 50 to 100 emails, just wait until that number is over 300 and the number of matters you are tracking time for is 10 to 20 each day. It's completely inefficient to have to search an inbox for one email when by subfiling, the context of the email or the date order or sender make it much easier to find.

Filing makes your archived email a long term record that is easily accessible in the future not only for you, but for someone else who has to find an email in your account after you've left the job.

It takes approximately a quarter of a second for me to drag an email to the appropriate folder after I read it and respond or whatever I have to do. The only emails that stay in my inbox are the ones I have to deal with in the future.

My rule of thumb is that hopefully I should never have to open the same email more than once. I learned that rule in a time management seminar in 1990 as applying to the old fashioned inbox with actual paper in it and have carried it forward to email and it's still one of the most valuable time management techniques I've ever learned.

Having thousands of emails in your inbox is the equivalent of having stacks and stacks of paper in your office. Just because you know how to lay your hands on a specific piece of paper in 10 seconds, no one else who is ever asked to find something in your office will ever be able to locate it. It's one thing to treat a home email account that's for chit chat like that, but IMHO it's completely irresponsible for a business account.