Hoarders vs. Deleters: How You Handle Your Email Inbox Says a Lot About You
You are your inbox.
Take a clear-eyed look at how you answer or file each email. Notice what you choose to keep or delete. Consider your anxiety when your inbox is jammed with unanswered messages.
The makeup and tidiness of your inbox is a reflection of your habits, your mental health and, yes, even the way Mom and Dad raised you.
"If you keep your inbox full rather than empty, it may mean you keep your life cluttered in other ways," says psychologist Dave Greenfield, who founded the Center for Internet Behavior in West Hartford, Conn. "Do you cling to the past? Do you have a lot of unfinished business in your life?"
On the other hand, if you obsessively clean your inbox every 10 minutes, you may be so quick to move on that you miss opportunities and ignore nuances. Or your compulsion for order may be sapping your energy from other endeavors, such as your family.
Email addiction, of course, is now a cultural given. But a less-noticed byproduct of that is the impulse of the inbox. Some of us are obsessed with moving every email to an appropriate folder while killing junk "spam" on arrival and making sure Mom knows that we got her email and still love her. Meanwhile, others among us are e-procrastinators -- modern-day Scarlett O'Haras who figure we'll deal with old email tomorrow. We're discovering that the disorder in our inboxes mirrors the disorder in our homes, marriages and checkbooks.
A few months ago, Scott Stratten was suffering from what he terms "inbox paralysis." A marketing consultant in Oakville, Ontario, he had 500 old messages in his inbox, all needing responses. "I felt so guilty, I couldn't even bring myself to open my email," he says.
In desperation, he decided to delete all his messages. He then sent an email blast to 400 people on his contact list, telling them a lie. He made up a story that his Internet service provider had informed him that some emails weren't getting through -- and that was why friends and clients never heard back from him. "People were very empathetic," he says, "and it allowed me to start fresh."
Mr. Stratten describes what he did as "pure evil," but he also calls it a turning point. He realized he had to find a better way to ease his guilt over not coming through for people. He is now hiring an assistant who will handle his email.
Those who are too nice in other areas of their lives may be more likely to struggle with unwieldy inboxes, says Merlin Mann, creator of 43folders.com, a Web site about personal productivity. Polite people (or those who want to be liked) feel obliged to participate in ping-pong correspondences with chatty friends. They haven't the heart to give anyone the no-response brush-off. But Mr. Mann says such ruthlessness is necessary.
He says he uses a few dozen "templates" to answer email -- prewritten form letters in which he inserts a person's name or a personalized comment. He also empties his inbox hourly. "You have to treat your inbox like you treat your mailbox at home," he says. "You wouldn't store your bills inside your mailbox. And leaving spam in your inbox is like leaving garbage in your kitchen."
On the work front, you're most at risk for inbox clutter if you're the type who can't say "no," warns Nancy Flynn, executive director of the ePolicy Institute, a consulting firm. When you're quick to respond with offers of help, "people use email to turn their crisis into your emergency," she says.
In Greensboro, N.C., Internet consultant Wally Bock keeps his inbox down to a manageable few dozen messages. He credits his sense of order to "having disciplined parents who made that a value." Still, he recognizes the downside. Many "Inbox Zero" zealots interrupt their work every time they hear a ping announcing incoming email. "Multitasking is a misnomer," says Mr. Bock. "What you're really doing is switching rapidly between tasks. And every time you switch, you have to start up again. Over the course of a day, you lose a chunk of efficiency."
A saner way to pare down an inbox is to move email into folders -- by subject or need for follow-up -- and once a week set aside time for inbox housekeeping. That's advice from Marilyn Paul, author of "It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys," a book for the chronically disorganized. She also suggests using the inbox alphabetizing feature, which organizes all email by sender. "That allows you to delete 1,000 emails an hour," she says.
University of Toronto instructor Christina Cavanagh studied hundreds of office workers for her book "Managing Your Email: Thinking Outside the Inbox." One of her subjects, a finance executive, had 10,000 emails in his inbox. She advised him to simply delete the oldest 9,000. Busy people, drowning in email, may have no choice but to kill old messages and suffer the consequences. (Mr. Mann calls this "euthanasia.")
Because "inboxes are metaphors for our lives," Dr. Greenfield says, there's no cure-all solution to inbox management. We're all too different. But he believes an awareness of our inbox behavior can help us better understand other areas of our lives.
"If you have 1,000 emails in your inbox, it may mean you don't want to miss an opportunity, but there are things you can't pull the trigger on," Dr. Greenfield says. "If you have only 10 emails in your inbox, you may be pulling the trigger too fast and missing the richness of life."
看邮箱，识性格
你的收件箱就是你自己。
仔细看看你是如何回复或归档每封电子邮件的，看看你选择保留哪些邮件，又删除了哪些邮件；当收件箱中充斥著未回复邮件时，你是否感到焦虑？
你收件箱的布局和整洁程度能反映出你的生活习惯、精神状态，甚至父母养育你的方式。
'如果你收件箱中满是邮件，却不加以清理，那可能意味著你的生活也是一团糟。'美国康涅狄格州West Hartford市互联网行为研究中心(the Center for Internet Behavior)的心理学家戴维?格林菲尔德(Dave Greenfield)说道，'比如你是否留恋过去，是否生活中还有很多没有做完的事情？'
从另一方面来说，如果每隔10分钟就下意识地清理收件箱，那你可能太过心急，会与机会失之交臂，并且往往会忽略细节；或者说，你过于追求秩序，会影响你处理其它事情的精力，比如不够关心家人等。
当然，沉迷于电子邮件现已成为一种普遍的文化现象，但其中的副产品－－收件箱冲动症－－却尚未得到普遍关注。我们有些人醉心于将每条邮件放到对应的文件夹中，一有垃圾邮件就删除，一收到给妈妈的电子邮件就赶紧回复、生怕她不知道我们依然爱她，等等。而与此相反，其他一些人却是拖拖拉拉，邮件总想等到明天再去处理。我们发现，收件箱里的杂乱无章反映出人们在家庭、婚姻和财务方面的杂乱无章。
几个月前，营销咨询顾问斯考特?斯特莱登(Scott Stratte)患上了一种他称为“收件箱瘫痪”的病症。那次他的收件箱中有500封邮件需要他答复。“我觉得很内疚，甚至不敢打开邮箱查看。”他说道。
在绝望中，他决定删除所有邮件，然后给通讯簿上的400人群发邮件，撒谎说互联网服务商通知他可能无法收到一些邮件－－所以他才没给朋友和客户及时回复。“大家都很同情我，”他说，“这样我才得以重新开始。”
斯特莱登说他的行为“太恶劣了”，但也将这件事看作一个转折点。他意识到自己必须找到一种方法，减轻不能及时回复邮件时的负疚感，现在他专门聘请了一个助手，帮他处理邮件。
43folders.com是一个研究个人效率的网站，其创始人莫林?曼恩(Merlin Mann)说，那些在生活中彬彬有礼的人可能更容易陷入收件箱的噩梦之中，因为有礼貌的人（或是那些希望别人喜欢自己的人）觉得有义务及时回复朋友的邮件，他们没有对别人邮件不理不睬的勇气。不过曼恩说，这种不理不睬是必须的。
曼恩说，他自己有几十种邮件回复“模板”，只要把对方的姓名或一段特别的话插入其中即可；此外，他每小时都会清理收件箱。“你必须用对待家里信箱的态度来对待电子邮件收件箱”，他说，“你不会把账单信件留在信箱中，而把垃圾邮件留在收件箱中就等于把垃圾留在厨房里不倒掉。”
ePolicy Institute咨询公司的执行董事南希?弗莱恩(Nancy Flynn)警告说，如果你在工作时不善于拒绝别人，那么你的收件箱很可能面临危机，因为当你迅速回复电子邮件时，“人们会用邮件跟你不断联系，最终把他们的问题变成你的危机。”
互联网咨询顾问沃里?伯克(Wally Bock)将收件箱信件数量控制在几十条以内，他说从小父母的教育让他养成井井有条的习惯。不过，他认为这种处理方式也有缺点。许多人热衷于实现“收件箱零邮件”，每次一听到来信提示音，就会中断手头的工作来处理邮件。“一个人不可能同时做几件事，”伯克说，“只不过是经常从一件事跳到另一件事而已，而每次转换时，你都得再熟悉一遍情况。用这种方法干一天的活，其实会浪费很多时间。”
更理智的整理收件箱的方法是将邮件放到不同的文件夹中，以主题或需要关注的程度分门别类，每星期专门拿出时间清理一次收件箱。这是《找到关键才能有所作为》(It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys)一书的作者玛丽莲?保罗(Marilyn Paul)给出的建议。这是一本专为长期缺乏条理的人所写的书。她还建议使用收件箱的字母排序功能，以发信人的名字给邮件排序。“这样你花一个小时就能删除1000封邮件，她说道。
多伦多大学(University of Toronto)的讲师克里斯汀娜?卡瓦纳(Christina )是《管理电子邮件：独辟蹊径》(Managing Your Email: Thinking Outside the Inbox)一书的作者。为此，她研究了数百名办公室一族，其中有个财务总监，收件箱中居然积攒了10,000封邮件。她建议此人干脆将以往的9000封一次性删除。对那些淹没在邮件海洋中的大忙人来说，唯一的解脱方法就是删除老邮件，并为此承担一切后果。（曼恩管这种方式叫作“安乐死”。）
“收件箱是真实生活的写照”，格利菲尔德说，因此没有管理收件箱的万能灵药，因为每个人的情况都各不相同。不过他相信，更多地了解自己如何管理收件箱将有利于我们更好地了解自己的生活状况。
“如果你收件箱中有1,000封邮件，这可能说明你虽然不想错失机会，但有时却来不及抓住它”，格林菲尔德说，“如果你收件箱中只有10封邮件，说明你前进的脚步过于匆忙，难以细细品味生活的乐趣。”
Jeffrey Zaslow
