What Your Inbox Says About You

Here’s an interesting article: "Hoarders vs. Deleters: What Your Inbox Says About You". According to psychologist Dave Greenfield, how we handle our incoming E-mail is a reflection of how we handle the rest of our lives. He says "If you keep your inbox full rather than empty, it may mean you keep your life cluttered in other ways." He’s not full of approval for those who have super-tidy inboxes, either.

If you obsessively clean your inbox every 10 minutes, you may be so quick to move on that you miss opportunities and ignore nuances. Or your compulsion for order may be sapping your energy from other endeavors, such as your family.

The article cites the example of one person (a finance executive) who had 10,000 E-mail in his inbox, presumably unread. Perhaps part of the problem here is not that these people are always disorganised (although I’m sure that’s true for many). But some of them too may dread dealing with E-mail simply because they read slowly, type slowly, and hate to write. An E-mail that would take some people two minutes to respond to might necessitate 15 minutes work on their part. Via LifeHacker.