Thanks to the Post to Email challenge issued by WordPress, I now have only one unread message in my e-mail folder. How wonderful is that!
I cleared out the box while thinking about what I wanted to say today.
So, having already given myself a pat on the back, I decided to make a list of other observations.
Each one of them will be given a mark, by way of weighting. Total marks awarded to myself: 100.
I think it is a nice round number, percentage-wise.
- I still have far more e-mail friends and contacts than I do Facebook friends. 23
- I have 50 folders with subfolders for clients, friends, memberships and so on. I could make some improvements. -3
- I have sorted the Sent Items into their respective folders too. It is easy to follow correspondence this way. 20
- I last wrote a letter (via e-mail) to my parents in Australia 8 days ago. That is longer than one week. -10
- I have flagged one minor task to attend to (revision of the second verse of a translation of a poem I did for fun, following the kind parsing in the source language by a friend). My integrity is at stake (“Don’t start something you have no intention of finishing”). This attracts a modified negative grading, since only two people care. -8
- All administrative tasks associated with my freelance business are up-to-date. 25
- I have replied to all e-mails received (except of course, junk mail). 18
- I have removed flags from items I have dealt with. 10
- I have deleted outright things I know I will not read, even though they may be of some benefit, knowledge-wise. Too much information is too much information. 10
- I have one e-mail I ought to write (as the initiator of private correspondence). Slap on the wrist for procrastination weighed against its relative importance: -5
- I have not been able to figure out how to mute the volume on annoying adverts with sounds (or get rid of the adverts altogether) on the Internet, while still turning up the volume on my laptop so that I can hear when new mail arrives. This is annoying. I use a number of online dictionaries and other resources. I have trained my eyes not to look at the adverts, but cannot stand the Grim Reaper laughing at me with a written message in Portuguese asking me, “Do you know when you are going to die?”. Even thinking about that tiny question would provoke a huge rant from me. I shall be kind to myself in this case. Firstly, I am suffering and secondly, I do not know if it is possible to achieve the desired removal of adverts. Total penalty: -2
- With my volume on zero, I lost out on a job from a translation agency today because I did not check my inbox for over 30 minutes. I give myself 12 points for working for 30 minutes without being distracted at all, and have deducted 5 for losing out on potential income. Net result: 7
- While clearing out my mail box, and sorting into folders, I discovered three e-mails which I had received and replied to, but had no recollection of the names of the people who had sent them to me. -5
- At this rate, I shall never get to 100 points. Points for stamina, then: 10
- I have had the same e-mail name since I got my first e-mail account in 2000. Note: I did not really need an e-mail at home until then. Besides which, you needed a telephone line to have an e-mail account, and I did not have one of those at home either. Times have changed, service providers have changed, but the name before the @ is the same. Points to stability, I would say: 15
It will be interesting to see how WordPress copes with the numbered list, and the font colours for the points (blue for positive; red for negative).
One curious little note on a slang term (which I seldom used myself, not being very slangy by nature): In Zimbabwe years ago, if someone was really entertained with what you had just said, or pleased with the news you had just given them, they would say, “Ah, 10 points!”. This awarding of points may have come from the fact that the only really interesting thing on television in the 1970s or so was the “inter-schools quiz”. I don’t know; I am guessing.
A related expression was “100%”, which signified agreement, and again, pleasure at the receipt of good news. This came into fairly widespread use around 2000. The expression soon changed to “Ah, hundred”, or “Ah, hundreds”, or simply, “Hundreds”. One other theory I have on the shift from “10 points” to “hundreds” is that it was a reflection of the all-pervasive hyperinflation, and perhaps people thought that 10 was no longer a significantly grand number.
In any case, I have scored 100 points. Hundreds.
Allison
I’m happy when I’m down to 100!
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I know the feeling! Today was a rare exception. 🙂
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Where is my spam…Oh I forgot I emptied it: I love you post, Allison: My Emails exhaustive task is combing through the the many spam messages, since from time to time there are legitimate messages stack there (like souls in the Purgatory). I gotta make sure I save them, before I empty!
Hope to see you around at EuZicAsa (It’s what I say). Thanks for visiting and don’t worry should you get stuck in my Spam cache: I always comb through carefully!
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I found you, george-b! Is the name of your blog Polish? Glad you enjoyed the post. Love your allusion to Purgatory. By extension, then, the Inbox could be Earth, Deleted Items for those consigned to Hell, and Sent Items quite close to the Pearly Gates. 🙂 I shall be sure to visit EuZicAsa again; you have a wealth of interesting material!
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Thanks a lot, Allison! 🙂
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Love this blog! Wonderful and awesome! http://www.segmation.wordpress.com
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Thank you!
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Thanks for the inspiration. I have over 2000 in my work email that I have been meaning to go through. Gotta make those folders up and get it organized! Great post
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You have some serious work ahead of you! If you deal with a couple of hundred a day, your inbox will be empty quite soon. Good luck!
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I wish…. I’m on 3500! Yikes. 😦
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I shouldn’t really, but I am giggling at that. 🙂 Not sure if “yikes” covers it.
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It’s a start Allison! Do giggle and btw, I forgot to say Congrats on being FP! 🙂
It’s a happy FP day for me too… So we can both giggle! 😆
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Of course it is a start, Eliz! (if I may call you that).
I am a little overwhelmed with the response from the FP phenomenon, so had not visited the blogs of those who have kindly left likes and comments yet. I shall do that at my leisure.
Having just read your post, I can now see more clearly why 3,500 is the number (roughly!) you are dealing with.
Congratulations to you too! 😀
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TY! 🙂
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Excellent! Have you tried AdBlock for Google Chrome or Firefox? Lifesaver…no noise and no ads! 🙂
And how did you lose out on a job? That’s sad 😦
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Thank you, Samantha, I shall certainly be looking at Adblock.
Don’t worry about the job. There are always more. One of my clients, a very well-organised, large translation agency, sends out an individual notification of an available assignment to a number of selected translators (who they believe would be suitable for the job) at the same time. Whoever replies within within five to ten minutes normally succeeds in getting the job. After that, forget it! Sometimes you receive a request for translation addressed to only to you (if you have worked on closely-related documents in the past, for example), in which case, the agency usually waits for about fifteen minutes before phoning you. But most of the time, the translators are like a bunch of children all trying to grab the last biscuit on the plate! 🙂
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I didn’t know it was a goal to have anempty email box…..way more than you….embarrassed to the point of paralysis to think I need to weed away
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Oh, yes! It is the whole corporate IN-tray OUT-tray mentality, the tidy desk, the sparkling kitchen sink, the fresh-cut lawn (we’ll keep the white picket fence out of this for now), the constant struggle to impose order upon disorder, the “let’s cut the c**p and deal with the real sh*t” attitude, the getting rid of old emotional baggage so that we can experience life to the full idea. It can be fun! 😉
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Congrats on this (both on the FP as well as cleaning out your inbox). Filing emails is like, well, filing. I still have mountains of papers to go through at work, which should really be filed. My email is not much better, but you have inspired me. I want to be able to say “hundreds!”
Cheers,
iRuniBreathe
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The fine art of filing. If you are disciplined and motivated enough to run… Nice photograph on your home page by the way. 🙂
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hahhaha… u r funny… totally made me laugh on a few things… being funny on writing, add a 10 for that too :p
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Thanks, mirrormon – I’ll put it in my pocket. 😉
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Too much info is too much info – I love it!! 😉
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Feel free to use it freely!
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But now you’re Freshly Pressed that number will go up again! Lol!
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It sure has! It is temporary though. As soon as I have seen it in the WordPress notifications, or replied on the blog, I delete the e-mail. You can also choose not to receive e-mail notifications (under settings somewhere) – which makes sense, if you are always looking at your blog anyway. 🙂
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Thanks fr that! I love the e – mails! It’s like a receipt from another happy customer!
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We can learn much from the state of one’s inbox. I’m thinking of my own, of what I’ve kept and why, with answers ranging from procrastination to sentimentality to confusion about a message’s redirection or filing. It’s mostly procrastination. I like your point system; my son tries every now and then to jokingly implement a point system, in which I as the mommy am horribly in the hole and he is of course way ahead of me. Funny, it never caught on. Keep writing!
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Understandable that it never caught on. That kind of game is doomed from the start. 🙂 Actually, this is the new and improved self-acknowledgement plan. On the old one, I only counted the negatives.
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Wow what an accomplishment. I’d give you several hundreds. I have several email addresses all overflowing, except one. I’d love to hear about Zimbabwe do you write about it on your blog. I was looking for some first-person information for a trip. Either great numbering system you have and good luck keeping it up!
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Thank you, Feather Story. I do not write about Zimbabwe, except in passing since it forms so much of my past. I am not sure that I am the best person to write about it either, having emigrated to Portugal four years ago. I did write about it in a general sort of way two days ago in “The girl out of Africa”. After a quick look at your blog, I would think one approach to get the most out of your trip would be to find like-minded groups in Zimbabwe and take it from there. There are so many different kinds of trips you can have in Zimbabwe. For example,I once encountered a young German fellow who was travelling through Africa on a petrol-powered bicycle! If you are going the five-star hotel route or safari adventure route, you will not be disappointed either. If you do ever get there, you will find the people friendly and helpful, but you do need to be streetwise.
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Good for you. As much as I want my inbox to be free or at least less than 50, I couldn’t.
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As I think I have said somewhere, it does not happen that often. 🙂
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At the end of the calendar year last year I blindly deleted all emails in my personal account — you know, just to see if I would die or something. Still kicking.
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Very brave of you!
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How much email did you have unread to start out with? It took me a week to clear my inbox once. I had like 4000 mails unread.
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Good point. After reading some comments, I feel like a bit of a whimp! I had about 250 unread, which is the level it reaches after about 12-18 hours if left to its own devices. I suppose I receive about 100 e-mails every day. I do some inbox “management” every day, but normally stop when I get to a number below 100 unread. The unread mail was “low priority but interesting”. The biggest part of this exercise for me was ensuring that read mail I do need to keep ends up in the correct folder, and that old and no longer relevant stuff (from the main inbox and all sub-folders!) makes it all the way into the trash. We do create stress for ourselves, don’t we?!
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Indeed. 100 mails a day is a lot. If you had let that accumulate, you’d have more than any normal human would be able to keep up with. Well done indeed 🙂
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