Keep it clean
For maybe the last month, I’ve kept my gmail inbox really really clean.
I started using filters to mark the bacn as read. I put labels on different things. The blog comments are marked in a different way too.
I can easily sort through my email in short order. And now it sometimes looks a little bare and lonely.
Though I haven’t tried to sort my other email address in Thunderbird, I’ve managed to get that inbox cleaned out too. Old items are taken care of, either deleted or filed. I don’t have anything left.
I think I’m going to switch to all gmail pretty soon, too. I plan on switching ISPs so the Comcast address will need to go. I’ve already transferred some of the bacn to gmail anyway.
It’s a pain to change email addresses. Some people just won’t remember that you don’t use that address any more, no matter how many times you tell them. Ah well. If I stop paying Comcast for internet, my address just won’t work. Good luck with that.
Anyway, getting back to the clean inbox. It feels good. And empty. I sometimes plow through my email and Google Reader and then think: now what? What’s left?
Since I started using Google Reader to plow through blogs with RSS feeds, it’s streamlined my blog reading a ton. I don’t have to physically check sites any more. The downfall is that I almost never visit sites. I forget that not everything has a feed. Not everything can have a feed.
I use del.icio.us extensively to keep track of what sites I’d like to go back to, but sometimes I view it as a filing cabinet shoved into the corner. How often do I actually go back?
E-organization, it turns out, is as murky an art as trying to organize papers in my real life. And since I have a huge messy pile on my computer desk right now …
Ah well. I’ll hit a spell of RL organization soon. I have to.