The Day I Deleted My Inboxes

<p>I think I’ve mentioned before that I have a lot of email addresses that I have to maintain regularly. I have my personal address, my business address, my spam address, and 10 or more client addresses. Clients often give me an email from their domain so when I’m communicating with their clients, vendors, or whomever else, it’s more cohesive. It may sound like a lot, but I don’t really mind. It actually helps me keep everything separated so I can focus on one client at a time without one massive inbox.</p> <p>I’m pretty organized with my email. My inbox is my to-do list. Everything that’s been addressed gets filed into an appropriate folder, because you never know when you’ll need to reference something again, sometimes years later. I only delete things that would never have another use (like all of those “thanks” replies from everyone in a group email). It’s always a goal to have an empty inbox, or to at least be able to see some white space at the bottom of the list.</p> <p>The inbox in my personal email tends to be the most cluttered. This is for all those things people send me that I mean to get to, but don’t always have time. All the articles I want to read, recipes I want to make, songs I need to hear, or videos I need to watch. I probably have stuff in there that’s at least a couple years old. I plan on getting around to it. I really do.</p> <p>Last week, I finally had a bit of a break between jobs and thought about going through that inbox to clear it out. To do the things or delete them. I started, and then, of course, some work came up and I didn’t get back to it. I had every intention to do it, but that’s just how it goes sometimes. Can you sense the foreshadowing here?</p> <p>When I’m managing multiple projects, the “All Inboxes” folder in Outlook is helpful – it lets me see anything new that comes in so I can keep that open on my laptop while I’m doing actual work on my iMac. It’s part of my system. For one of the projects I’m working on, we use a site called frame.io – it’s lovely if you’re wor