E-mails

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had to leave work a bit early (4:45 pm) on Friday in order to pick-up Mr. Fix-it and get to our babysitting duties on time. From then until I walked in this morning, I received 49 e-mails, plus a project schedule changed last minute, plus the people to finish this project are coming in late today, plus I won't know the status of this project until these people come in. No wonder I soooo look forward to my weekends!

10,428

That's how many e-mails I have stored at work. A couple weeks ago, I was under 10k, which was pretty exciting since I'm a packrat. But we're incredibly busy at work and sometimes I have trouble wading through the 50, 60, 70 e-mails I get. Yes, I only keep the last e-mail on a thread. Yes, I delete unnecessary e-mails (but who's to say what is necessary and what isn't?). No, I don't see a light at the end of the tunnel for this workload.

How many e-mail addresses do you have?

I have five: one for work, one personal that I check almost daily, one personal that I check every couple days, one I hardly check at all, but I keep because I need it to send large files and to maintain my google account, and one joint account with A. I also have a couple of inactive freebie accounts that I could probably reactive if I wanted. The two personal were to separate my fun life (scrapbooking) from my serious life (professional orgs, family). But I'm migrating more and more people to my fun e-mail since I check that one more often. Does that mean I'm having more fun in life? I hope so! lol! But I really think it means that I'm trying to simplify my life.

Can I blame Hotmail?

I sent a friend an e-mail and it turns out it wasn't her e-mail, but rather a friend that she hardly sees anymore. I had attached her name to the wrong e-mail. I know that when I selected her name, I felt some confusion. Several months ago, Hotmail updated their UI (User Interface, what you see on screen/how you navigate) and I hated it. It put almost all my e-mail contacts in my shortcut list, so I was searching the 50+ list for her name. I found one I thought was hers and used it. Obviously that was a mistake! How embarrassing for me! And maybe for my friend since the e-mail involved money. Big opps! At least she laughed about it.

Yahoo! I broke 10,000!

10k of what, you ask? Yesterday, I finally reduced my e-mails to fewer than 10,000. Of course, that lasted less than 24 hours. But by the end of today, I brought it back down again. Monday will probably be okay because our parent company is on vacation. I expect the count to go back up on Tuesday. And by the end of the month when we get busy again? I hope, hope, hope, I can keep under 11,000.

Why so many you ask? Since I'm a project lead, I get cc'd on almost every e-mail for every project in the department. Plus I get pseudo-management e-mails. Yes, I know how to keep only the last of a mail thread. Yes, I know how to delete e-mails after a question is answered. But we have 11 pages of active projects and that's a lot of e-mails.