And the rarer strategy of actually dealing with all of one’s emails promptly doesn’t even seem obviously better.
Why not?
I get lost there, because my model is ‘emails are important for communication, they have the problems you describe here, and the solution is to answer as quickly as possible’.
Sometimes, responding takes too much effort for that to be reasonable, but it often doesn’t.
At work, I’m cc’d on maybe 100-200 emails daily, and some of my coworkers get many times more. Many of those are unimportant (or rather, I’m on a thread that someone else is mainly handling, so they’re unimportant *for me*), but it isn’t normally easy to tell which (and many of those could become important for me at any time). And when it is important, responding often requires reading a lengthy message chain I got added to in the middle. I try to scan through them quickly once a day, and thoroughly every 2-3 days. Most I never respond to because it’s not needed.
At my personal email address, I also get 100-200 emails daily. Most of them are unimportant, but continue to arrive no matter how many times I unsubscribe from various lists or try to use filters to block them. Most of the rest are auto-generated, like order and shipment notifications. I find sorting through those to find the few important ones annoying, and it’s easier and faster for me to do it in larger batches, say once every two weeks. Anyone who really needs me urgently is more likely to reach me by text, phone, or another messaging platform.
Why not?
I get lost there, because my model is ‘emails are important for communication, they have the problems you describe here, and the solution is to answer as quickly as possible’.
Sometimes, responding takes too much effort for that to be reasonable, but it often doesn’t.
At work, I’m cc’d on maybe 100-200 emails daily, and some of my coworkers get many times more. Many of those are unimportant (or rather, I’m on a thread that someone else is mainly handling, so they’re unimportant *for me*), but it isn’t normally easy to tell which (and many of those could become important for me at any time). And when it is important, responding often requires reading a lengthy message chain I got added to in the middle. I try to scan through them quickly once a day, and thoroughly every 2-3 days. Most I never respond to because it’s not needed.
At my personal email address, I also get 100-200 emails daily. Most of them are unimportant, but continue to arrive no matter how many times I unsubscribe from various lists or try to use filters to block them. Most of the rest are auto-generated, like order and shipment notifications. I find sorting through those to find the few important ones annoying, and it’s easier and faster for me to do it in larger batches, say once every two weeks. Anyone who really needs me urgently is more likely to reach me by text, phone, or another messaging platform.