Email Overload: How are we doing so far? Part 2

(Continuation of Part 1: Email Overload: Clear your inbox in a few easy steps)

I have been trying to clear my inbox manually for the last couple of weeks to get a better feel for the need for email productivity and email overload tools. I also wanted to get my Outlook file down from a gigantic 15 G to something more manageable for me and digestible by Outlook. The stats so far:

Outlook.pst file: 15 G -> 6 G (!)
Inbox items: 6,743 -> 124 (Not that great, I’ll explain)

So, there’s been progress, but there is still a long way to go.

It has been easier to trim my Outlook.ost than to reduce my inbox. Before embarking, I had already organized older emails by year (2007, 2008, 2009) and block-moved older emails to those directories, in an early feeble attempt to clear my inbox. Revisiting and handling the majority of those emails was very simple (and much simpler for the older ones). I took each year, then simply organized by sender. Most senders were very easy to manage and I was able to delete all their emails. Senders with whom I had more communication were a little harder, but I quickly waded through the subjects and threads and decided which to keep and which to delete. Most were deleted, but not without a little bit of natural nervousness on my side. I have not yet been through all the past years, which seems to get more difficult as I handle more recent emails.

Now to my inbox. I have been trying to manage it more carefully, working at least every other day to trim it down and act on each message by adding to a ToDo and postponing, deleting, or storing it. The discipline is not quite there yet, although I certainly delete a lot more incoming email than I used to, especially newsletters (after glancing or reading), automated reports and FYIs. The bulk of the reduction came from block-moving all messages from 2010 to a newly created 2010 folder (I know, I know, I am postponing the pain). I have yet to stop my inbox from growing. On the O’Reilly blog, Mac Slocum recently asked whether it was even worth trying to get to ‘zero inbox’, with some very interesting responses so far. In our company, I discovered that about 15% of our staff are a little obsessive about manually clearing their inboxes daily, and break out in hives if they see more than a dozen or so messages in it. Clearly, personality has something to do with our reaction to this.

I use Outlook filters to redirect automated emails to specific folders: newsletters, updates from our issue tracking system and internal wiki, Quarantine reports from our anti-spam software, mailing lists. I see when new messages arrive in those folders and go through them daily. I delete most, after glancing or diagonal reading.

I am told that it is much more important to develop the daily discipline of handling all incoming messages and getting to a ‘zero inbox’. On that level I am failing so far, but will keep trying. As for the remaining messages now stored in folders 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010, I will begin cleaning them up using steps described as induction by Mark Hurst in Bit Literacy. The main benefit of that exercise will be to further reduce the size of my Outlook file.

Let me know about your own experience with zero inbox and email productivity. Is Gmail right about not needing folders and search being the way to flatten everything? Or is there still value in this type of organization and the tools around it?