Declaring Inbox(es) Zero

Status
I’ve made it to true inbox zero. Not just inbox — inboxes, plural.

Plural?
I maintain a half dozen or so email addresses for various purposes. The main one remains the one associated with this URL, disquiet.com.

Impact
If you’re expecting an email from me (please note the qualification below), I respectfully ask that you remind me what the subject was. After a long haul, I’ve dug myself out of a voluminous email backlog, in some cases going back years. This required some tough decisions about what might plausibly be relegated to the past. Such is email. Such is life, digital or otherwise. Also, an empty inbox doesn’t mean a blank to-do list.

Qualification
If what you’re expecting a reply to is an inquiry from you to me about me writing about your music or art, please understand that I can’t reply to all of those emails, because I receive upwards of 100 a day. (This topic is covered in the Disquiet F.A.Q.) The majority of such inbound emails don’t even make it to my inbox. They’re filtered immediately to a series of folders that I explore when I have the time.

Process
I know people who can’t imagine letting more than a half dozen emails linger in their inbox. And I know people who think “inbox zero” is a load of procedural hogwash. To each their own. I’m not here to argue, least of all that one size fits all.

Hello
Don’t read this as an admonition against correspondence. I live, in many ways, a long-distance life, even though I have an active “in-person” social life, and I dwell in the U.S. city with the second highest population density (for a city with over 300,000 residents). My writing, my interests, my listening, and the Disquiet Junto music community put me in touch with countless people far away — the vast majority of whom I will never meet in person. All things said, I’m pro-email. You can, though, have too much of a good thing.

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Published on September 16, 2023 10:36
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