The other day, I asked Ev Bogue to publish what his email inbox looks like on a given day. He replied and asked me what mine looks like. I can’t tell you what it’ll look like tomorrow or the day after, but here’s at least what mine looked like yesterday:
- A reply about some financial information I requested from my bank
- An update from my dad about church back home
- A backup file from one of my websites
- A link I emailed myself about an interesting website I discovered
- A daily letter from Ev
- A notice that a new subscriber had signed up for an old website I never shut down
- A friend emailing about a book club meeting
- A friend emailing about some of my volunteer work
- A notice about some books I thought about ordering
- A reply about a scheduling conflict I had
- A reply through this site
- Another reply through this site
- Spam written in Korean from someone in Korea (listed with a few other friends of mine)
So overall, I got 13 emails: one from a spammer, two replies through this site, one maintenance email, three replies to direct requests I sent, three from people I know in person about things I care about, two I pretty much sent to myself, and one from a site I subscribe to.
I don’t know what yours is like, but to me this seems pretty sparse. And I like that. About two years ago, my email felt a lot more crowded because of school and a bunch of other things. Now I enjoy checking it, and I enjoy keeping it clean.
I have a couple other accounts, like for school and spam and subscriptions. But I check them less than once a week. My primary account, the one I check each day, feels pretty balanced and small right now. I like that.
It feels more like mail, the kind that comes in a mailbox.
What about you? What’s your email like?
