I just cleaned out my e-mail inbox.

An hour ago I had 397 unread e-mails. Right now? I have zero.

The e-mail notifier at the top of my screen is grayed out. None of the e-mails in my inbox are in bold. For the first time in at least a year, I have no unread e-mails to attend to when I have time. You have no idea how liberating this feels.

Although I still have 2,364 messages in my inbox, I have set up some new filters and labels to help manage the incoming mail. Over the next few days, I’m going to try and archive most of the mail, sort it, delete what’s unnecessary, reduce the number of items in my inbox and generally wipe the inbox clean.

The problem with having essentially unlimited e-mail space courtesy of GMail is that there is no incentive to keep it tidy. I want to reverse this and keep it even more organized than I do now (which with about 20 filters is still pretty organized). Perhaps my new years resolution can be keeping my inbox organized. Of course, not receiving about 100 e-mails a day from Stater listservs, editors, reporters, sources, etc. should help a bit.

Of course, there is also something depressing about having an empty inbox.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 27th, 2006 at 2:19 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.