I have noticed around my office that there are a few different types of ways people manage their email.
1. The perfect file: This person has an empty inbox, they take every email they get and put it into folders which have a filing system to them. The minute something comes in they deal with it then file it. I am not one of these so I can not understand how they are able to do this.
2. The inbox keeper: This is a system by which you never delete anything. it is all still in the inbox but you do have one criterion, there are none that has not been at least marked as read. They have received a glance if not dealt with so as to know if anything new has come in. You might have a few folders but they are inconsistently used to store random stuff. I am this kind of user and I know I can search my inbox for anything and find it. One large filling folder. Hey, it works for me!
3. Complete and utter anarchy: This is the person who has the icon in the corner that says they have 3000 unread emails. This person looks at the email header and never touches it if it isn’t something they care about. And I can tell you they care about very little. I dream of having some sort of organization in my life, this person is in love with chaos! I witnessed a co-worker talking to his boss asking if he could do a select all and mark those thousands of emails read just so he didn’t have to know that they were there. I am thinking of helping him accomplish this while the boss is away from his desk. Now that I know about it, it is bugging me. See my post about voicemail if you want to know why.