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by ep103 2149 days ago
I laughed while reading your response, because I was reading your response while eating a small amount of ice cream, specifically because I was about to go back to purging my day's worth of incoming emails, a task I genuinely hate doing : D
1 comments

I found myself doing the same, but I finally got so fed up with it I took action. I'm not sure about the content of your emails, but many of mine were from groups I was following that I had no interest in any longer, from code changes being made to repositories in which I no longer work, or just generic crap that I can't disable.

When I get an email I don't care about, I take action to make sure I don't get any more. I unsubscribe if it's a distribution list or some website that bought my email. I throw garbage I can't control into its own folder using Outlook rules. If it's a repo that I don't need, I unfollow it in github.

Over the years as my email volume increased I did a lot of fine tuning to my email process (stars, labels, read/unread management, etc). Once it surpassed a certain threshold (maybe 250 per day), I just cut out email management entirely. I don't archive, I rarely label, I just go through the latest, respond to anything pressing, and if there's anything that needs further followup it goes to my OmniFocus inbox where I prioritize all my work.

Email is critical to my work, but gardening it is not worth the opportunity cost.