An inbox is a term that has changed over the years. When I first went into business, I had an inbox. It was a wood tray whose internal measurement was slightly larger than an 8.5″ by 11″ sheet of paper. It just so happened that I had two similar boxes. One was labeled “Inbox” and the other was labeled “Outbox”. The “Inbox” held all those things that were awaiting my attention. There were bills to be paid, documents to be read/reviewed, mail to be opened… I think you know about the general idea here, even if you are young enough to have not ever had such a box on your desk. The “Outbox” held all those things that had already made their way through the “Inbox”, been handled appropriately (you know, documents read, junk mail skimmed and thrown into the trash, signatures placed where they were needed, mail opened, etc.). I don’t know about you but my “Inbox” had a tendency to have a significantly larger stack in it than the “Outbox”. But, that’s another story all together. Let’s move on.

Many of us dreaded all those things that hit our “Inbox” because it meant there were DETAILS that we had to deal with, most of which represented the things that we enjoyed the least. Today, an “Inbox” is a completely different beast (and I don’t use the word “beast” lightly). The sheer volume of “stuff” in that old “Inbox” seemed to be overwhelming. But this new version of the old concept is even worse. I actually searched (you know, Googled, Bing’d, etc.) to see if there were any real numbers about how many messages hit the average Inbox every day. So far, the general consensus is “A LOT”. I’m in the IT field and I work with everything from the SOHO (Small Office, Home Office) to the largest enterprise businesses (names that are known by almost every household) and I can tell you that almost everyone is overwhelmed by the volume of messages that arrive in there “Inbox”. I hear people complain about the 20 – 30 messages that they get every day and I complain about the 700 – 1000 that hit mine (no, I’m not stretching the truth here…). Where ever you fall, I have no doubt that you are among those of us who feel like we’re fighting a “Battle of the Inbox”, and not confident that we’re winning that battle.

I’ve researched this topic extensively… Although I can’t claim to have this particular battle won, I can tell you that I’m winning some of the occasional skirmish and I have some ideas that will help you. If you’re fighting this battle, stay with me and I’ll offer some useful tips. I’ll be back tomorrow with one of the toughest suggestions that I’ll make during this entire series.

Thanks,
Roger

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 10:28 am and is filed under Managing Your Inbox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.