Emails!

Today I have received 81 emails!

Of those emails, 5 of them were useless public announcements ("Come to the National Preparedness Month Kickoff Ceremony!"). Another 10 or so were emails that I was pointlessly cc'd on. The remaining 66 emails were all items that I needed to be made aware of, needed to take action on, and/or needed to respond to. No wonder I feel like I'm drowning.

I delete the meaningless emails immediately, but everything else I save in my inbox - you know, just in case. The email system archives everything older than 6 months automatically to a backup server and removes them from the inbox. That's a good thing, because I currently have 4,833 old emails in my inbox, including 737 from my boss (did I mention that he sits right next to me?). Almost 5,000 emails in the last 6 months! That is absurd!

I can't walk away from my desk for more than 10 minutes without returning to an inbox of unread emails. Lunch breaks, same thing. A day off mid-week - it'll take nearly an hour just to wade through everything! One coworker went to Africa for a 2 week family vacation. It took him 4 days just to sift through the sea of "unreads", and he probably only looked at 1/3 of the items sent to him.

It makes me wonder how anything got done around here before we had email. Would I have received 81 phone calls today? 81 carbon-copied memos? Would I have gotten more or less work done? I love technology, don't get me wrong, but 81 emails...

Oh, just checked my inbox, I have received 6 emails in the time it took me to write this post. 87 emails! Sweet!