Email is a social medium, and it’s the one that gives all kinds of people enormous headaches. I know very few people who haven’t, at some point, looked at their inbox first thing in the morning and thought, “I just want to delete it all and start over.”
This is not new, but it does seem like it’s the topic of the day; I’m seeing a steady stream of blog posts and news articles about getting control of your inbox. One of the better ones is this post by Mark at the Nutshell Mail blog.
It’s a good set of rules; I’ll just add my endorsement of the “inbox zero” concept of emptying your inbox every day. After the initial hellish clear-out, it keeps things manageable, and by diligently turning every message into a filed-away informational item, a to-do on your to-do list, or simply deleting it - if, of course, you haven’t responded to it - things seem to work much better. Some people talk about these email management techniques as transformational - I haven’t found that, personally. They’re just really useful.
If you’re having the usual email headaches, though, check it out.