“Today I visited someone with over 1,800 messages in her email inbox. They weren’t unread. The messages were being stored there. It took her 12 minutes to find the message she wanted to show me. Twelve minutes.
[snip]
Again, Entourage is not a filing cabinet. Leaving your messages in email is like leaving your groceries in the paper bags from Stop & Shop.
“
Man, I so agree with that. Except it’s wrong. A filing cabinet is exactly what email is. I’ve seen it.
I know folks who always live with 1800 messages in their inbox. I used to make fun of them. Then they’d repeatedly find things faster and more easily than I did.
Act accordingly (WRITE DOWN the action, move to cold storage, throw away)
I’m laughed at for suggesting things like that. The usual response is something like, “Why would I write it down or file it somewhere else when I already have it right where I can find it?” I’m sure there’s a good answer to that, but I don’t know what it is.
Me, with my System(s) and GTD and Mind-Like-Water and superior tone, would dig through properly referenced and archived messages looking for whatever. Meanwhile, just as I’d begin to break out in a sweat, they’d open their email program, quickly and deftly plucking just the right message from that vast impenetrable pile of crap all “filed” away randomly in their inbox.
Who am I to tell them how to file things?