My work inbox on 5/24/2013. I have 163 unique rules that sort and prioritize my email for consumption. On average I spend 4-5 hours a day reading, writing, and considering email. in the last week I’ve received 1,118 emails, with 558 unread. The unread messages are largely reports, research, or news that has been filtered for reading later. The remaining 560 email require action on my part and have been sorted and coded based on priority as defined by my email algorithm. I use lots of criteria in my sorting but the rules are based on my business’ goals; emails about strategic projects get highlighted and surfaced while lesser requests get allocated to times reserved in my day for processing through low-level requests (usually from 9-11pm or 6-9am 2 or 3 times a week depending on social commitments). Even with a comprehensive system that I’m regularly improving, about 25% of my email goes unprocessed due to low-volume senders (people/topics I’ve gotten so few emails about they haven’t warranted a rule), or in other words the long-tail makes up 25% of my work which coincidentally seems like a reasonable allocation of my time.
