Are you drowning under valid e-mails, too?

How's your inbox doing (excluding spam)?

[engine]

I was just checking the stats of my inbox and see in the last 12 months I received over 133,000 e-mails that required, at the very least, reading. This figure excludes all but a very few spam mails that manage to get through the defences.

The figures equate to:
An average of 365 per day or,
Assuming a working week of 5-days, that's equivalent to 509 per day.

It's quite a feat to deal with that volume.

Is anyone else drowning under the sheer volume of valid e-mails?

Throw me a line, I'm drowning! :-)

[aspdaddy]

I used to, one of my clients gave me this good advice -

Scan it ALL every morning, deal with only the most important ones. 1st of every month, delete it all and start again :)

[Mike12345]

Me too, i struggle to the surface and have to gasp for air, before being sucked back down into the abyss of emails, from clients who expect an instant reply.

[vibgyor79]

Set message rules in your mailer client based on -

- the name of the sender

If you are receiving a mail from your cousin, you will know it is just a forwarded joke - it can wait. Similarly, if you are receiving a mail from your boss, you better check it immediately - it could be a pink slip or a salary hike! Just create folders and set message rules for the senders.

- Newsletters

All the CNET/NYTimes etc newsletters go into the NEWSLETTER folder. This can wait too. Sometimes, you may have to set a message rule based on the "text in the sender's address" as some of them have FROM address as [e-mail]

You can also categorize emails based on other parameters like "business", "home", "forums" etc.

[4eyes]

Engine - clearly you have too many customers.

You have my contact details;)

[rogerd]

Interesting point, engine. The e-mail load was getting attention in pre-spam days, mostly in larger corporations. The complaint was that senders were copying everybody on everything, which made extra work for the reader who had to sift through all the CCs for the those items that were relevant and valuable.

With the spam onslaught, I haven't heard much about valid e-mail overload lately. I guess you have a lot more friends and/or clients than I do, engine! :)