Like many of you that read this blog, we all get a ton of email. A ton! We all have several spam filters to help weed out the bad stuff. We all have unsubscribed from newsletters and switched over to RSS subscriptions for those newsletters. We have all set up automatic rules to put messages you don't need to read immediately into different folders for later. But I am finding email these days to be unbearable...

It starts around 9:30am (EST), the emails start flying in. I begin to reply to one and then bam, as soon as I hit the reply button and put that email away, five more hit my inbox. Heck, I am a fast typer, I am very quick to reply to emails but I can't keep up between the hours of 10am-5pm throughout the day. Normally, after 6pm I am able to get through most the emails.

The good thing, is that if I am away from my desk for an extended period of time, I get less emails. For the obvious reason, that I do not reply to my previous emails, that require an additional reply, and so on.

Today, it is 1:30PM (EST), and I have already sent over sixty emails manually. This is not automated stuff. I sent 60 emails. How many did I receive? No idea, few hundred? I should get a program that works with Apple Mail to keep stats on this stuff, it would make for a nice graph.

Spam is still bad, but it catches 95% of the stuff, I would guestimate.

The real issue are the emails that need responses. Again, 60+ emails sent and it is only 1:30.

Between client work, employee stuff, internal business, side projects, press releases from the search writing, and other things, it is just sometimes, overwhelming.

Do I prefer the phone? Heck no! If you do call and get my voicemail, I will get that via email.

I am also psycho with keeping my email organized. I have a very detailed folder structure that works well for me. So putting emails in their appropriate buckets, is something I am a bit paranoid about. I think I need some counseling. :)

Alright, now I have a ton of emails that need my attention, so I will cut this short.