When I’m finished checking it, it’s always (and I do mean _ALWAYS_) empty. Every message in my main inbox is either dealt-with (responded to if it’s personal and requires a response, saved in another file if it’s personal and doesn’t require a response, or moved moved to its correct location if it’s a mis-delivered list message) or deleted, or else I don’t consider myself done checking email.

This is a simple requirement of netiquette for me, since if I don’t answer (or otherwise act on) your email the first time I see it, I’m unlikely to see it again for weeks.

Fact is, I’m only organized in my electronic life. Which is why I pay all my bills that way…they’d never get paid before stuff was being shut off or reposessed if doing so depended on me opening snail mail and writing checks. (My unofficial motto: “If it’s written on paper by someone I couldn’t pick out of a small crowd, I won’t read it.” Which neatly excludes all the novelists whose work I’m interested in, but not much else.) But electronically, I can pay bills in a timely fashion without any problems.

Here’s a quick rundown of some posts that caught my eye over the past week…

JLP wants to know what your inbox says about you. Me? I have 2119 messages in my inbox. Just like JLP, I ascribe this to laziness (and a healthy dose of being ove…

G-mail is fantastic because you can archive all emails and then use search mail to find anything you’ve kept hanging out in archive land. That may help all of you folks who just can’t delete anything. Just a thought:)

If you learned about email readers as a metaphor for organizing paper mail, you’re more likely to pay attention to things named “inbox”, etc.