Is your email inbox overflowing with thousands of messages, or is it virtually empty, with only the few messages that have come in since the last time you checked it? It seems like a simple personal preference, but the answer to the question of whether you are an email "filer" or "piler" says a lot more about you than you might think it does. While nobody can see into your inbox, the fact is that if you simply leave everything there and let it get pushed down by new messages that are coming in, you're almost certainly not giving enough thought to the things that hit your inbox. For pilers, the only clue as to whether an email has been dealt with is whether it is marked as read or unread. But all too often we read emails when we are not currently in a position to do anything about them. Even if we're careful about going back and marking messages as unread, they still get pushed down, out of sight, out of mind.
Right now, many of you with overflowing inboxes are probably screaming at your screen. How can we be so bold as to assume that we know if you're on top of your email or not based on this simple criteria? And plus, just last week we were writing about the virtues of Gmail. Gmail! You know, the email client made by that internet search juggernaut, Google! Surely if you need to find an email, it's only a search away. So why bother filing things at all?
Okay, we hear you, and understand your position. But there's really no gentle way to say this, so we're just going to come out and say it.
You're wrong.
Okay, there, we've said it. Everyone take a deep breath! Now let's look at how we can take such a controversial position in complete and utter knowledge that we are right, with not even the remotest possibility that we could be wrong. Alright then.
