Inbox attitudes

By Rebecca Bodman | Mar 05, 12 08:22 AM

Everyone manages their inboxes differently. Here we explain the inbox attitudes at Business Chicks HQ.

At Business Chicks HQ we've a whole heap of different inbox attitudes. To bring you up to speed; an inbox attitude is the way you choose to manage your inbox and within our office we all differ greatly.

I think your inbox is a hugely personal thing, it’s something you guard with your life and if you lost it somehow, you wouldn’t quite know what to do. Something happening to your inbox is comparable with all the horrible things in life (well this could be a #firstworldproblem, but you get the drift!).

Your inbox is deeply personal because you want to hide its real state from the rest of the world. You pretend that your system for managing your emails works for you and you’ll defend it vigorously. Secretly though your inbox does sometimes become overwhelming, you miss things or can’t find that email you’re sure you filed.

I think we all know how we should manage our inbox. We’ve heard a million times to set an hour aside twice per day to check our emails. We know we should delete, file and flag but who’s really doing all that?

What we have in our office is women at both ends of the spectrum; we all swear it works for us and I don’t think I’m lying when I say we all get the job done despite our different styles. Here are the different inbox attitudes in our office (DISCLAIMER: names have been removed to protect identities):

The hoarder – this person files every single email she EVER receives. Including daily Catchoftheday emails and Mamamia.com updates just in case she wants to read them again. The only thing she deletes is spam and that’s a challenging exercise.

The 1000+ - this person has 1000+ emails in her inbox all the time. She swears it doesn’t overwhelm her and claims she has that many in her inbox because in her role she constantly needs to refer to them.

The ‘to-do list’ – this person uses her inbox as her do-to list. Literally. It’s pretty hard trying to get her to do anything that’s not in there (this may be an exaggeration).

The folder maniac – this person has set her inbox up so any email that comes in is automatically transferred to its correct folder depending on the sender. Not sure how she works out what needs to be done though ...

The lethal weapon – this person is lethal with her inbox. She deletes anything that she doesn’t classify as super important.

The reactive – this person goes through her day in reaction to her inbox. When an email comes in she does any task needed immediately.

What’s your inbox attitude? We’d love to know ... so you can hopefully confirm we’re not all crazy!.

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1.
Lina Di Prisa
By Lina Di Prisa VIC | May 01, 2012, 05:22 PM

I wish I could be the "Lethal Weapon" but I'm a bit of a hybrid, 'the to do list', the 'folder maniac' and 'the reactive'. I need lots of clarity and everything to be orderly, so am definitely not the hoarder or 1000+. Reply

2.
Rebecca Munro
By Rebecca Munro QLD | Apr 22, 2012, 07:54 PM

I'm a cross between the lethal weapon and to-do list! My business partner is a folder manic and goes manic if something happens to her folders!! :)Reply

3.
Sarah Singer
By Sarah Singer VIC | Mar 13, 2012, 04:31 PM

Oh no - I'm the 1000+ one.......! Reply

4.
Victoria Prowse
By Victoria Prowse VIC | Mar 06, 2012, 08:19 AM

Well im officially the 1000+ and reactive!!! Eickkkk but I swear I need to refer to all 1000 - its my job ;-)Reply

5.
Rebecca Bodman
By Rebecca Bodman NSW | Mar 05, 2012, 05:22 PM

I think I'm the 'to-do' list. But I swear you can get me to do other things...Reply

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