Comments on: Mailbox Flood

By: NeoLithic

NeoLithic — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 00:40:28 +0000

I generally deal with large floods by starting with people I know. These are generally the first I read and respond to. If there are lots of people I know emailing me, I prioritize by dealing with the people I have spoken to most recently. Then, I deal with messages that look somewhat interesting. I never just go an delete emails, unless it is either spam, or just someone I don’t want to talk to.

By: Jake Birkett

Jake Birkett — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 22:56:18 +0000

I can’t abide a non-empty mailbox. I empty it every day. Sometimes an email requires a task to be completed, so I save that email into my digital in-tray and process it later when I have more time.

By: DtD Software

DtD Software — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 08:54:02 +0000

My technique is similar to yours. And yes, I am guilty of putting off replying to emails for days and they pile up. (I recently went back and replied or marked as read all my emails I hadn’t though)

–

One problem with Sargon’s auto-reply approach is that in the past, I’ve seen replies to spam sometime cause more spam to come (I used to have little auto-reply emails that said “The webmaster has recieved your email and will review it shortly.”)

~DtD

By: TKE Super Dave

TKE Super Dave — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 21:39:58 +0000

Depending on your email service, some have ways to flag different email groups and have them sorted for you, so that you still get to keep all your emails but you can figure out which are the most important. You may want to take a look into your email service and see if they have a way of separating the emails into groups by key words or email addresses. Sometimes it’s even part of the Spam blocker but you can use it for other groups too.

I use this to help me prioritize emails. I put mailing lists that I actually want to read but aren’t high in priority. I also have a few people who I need to talk with regularly that I set as high priority people so I can see their emails first. That’s how I set my priority emails.

By: Sargon

Sargon — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 20:13:58 +0000

There are ways to make your life easier, but they also make life harder for the people trying to send you an email.
Such as an automatic reply to whom is sending you email, requesting to resend the question with an appropriate headline.
That will filter some of the spam and other people who are too lazy to read your automatic responds.
However, this will be very annoying to the people who actually want to send you email and you actually want to read them.