My emails
Posted by Yassine on August 24, 2007
I spent more than one hour cleaning my Yahoo! inbox. It incredibly held more than 5000 emails received and 1280 sent. That seems a lot considering that I started Yahooing in 2005. I remember the 1st days, they didn’t automatically saved the sent emails. Now with more that 6000 emails I have either read (ah yes, I read all my emails!) or typed I feel I have a real treasure. My nightmare would be to loose it all or that someone gets my password…
I have used almost all famous email providers starting with caramail (now lycos) in the late nineties to the new Gmail with an invite. This latter offers incredible features to label instead of putting your emails in folders, archive your mail to make them disappear with a click rather than delete and if you need them later, you can still make a search to retrieve them. But I think I will still stick with Yahoo for now…
In the process of sorting out my stacks of mails, I invented folders like CPR05 for my SIG, Signups for the confirmation emails I get from the websites I subscribe to (200), MATE for the association related news, and another couple of folders for my work and trainings. Still, I had some 800 emails that were about notifications, newsletters that I don’t want today but I may need later. The problem was what should I name the folder containing these. Yahoo provides a fixed Spam folder that they automatically clean after a month and my 800 newsletters and notifications weren’t spam and I didn’t want to delete them.
Going through my daily read I stumbled upon on one my favourite blogs that talks about Bacn. The definition given is the following:
low-priority messages that you really want, but not right now: Facebook notifications, newsletters you signed up for, things like that.
There is even an official website for bacn.
Eureka !
I named my 800 emails bacn!
SimplyMoroccan said
What a nice post! Sounds like myself talking! I hate to imagine that someone would ever get my password too, and do not delete mail easily. I delete forums notifications, because I don’t feel like I’ll ever need them. And I have a few newsletters I never read, but I keep them… Just in case!
By the way, why did you have to clean your inbox? Yahoo! is offering plenty of space now.
Yassine Sabir said
I cleaned my inbox in the sense I put each email in a proper folder. I’m trying to follow David Allen’s GTD way as it is said to lessen stress. Check it here; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done
I’m still uncertain wether I can keep my inbox emails at 0 ?
I’ll post about it after some months.
SimplyMoroccan said
The GTD is such a procrastination encouraging method! You just take notes of things you have to do, and you clear your mind from them! And then if you can’t do them right away, you just defer them? Lame!
Er… That’s exactly what I do, more or less.
I don’t imagine my inboxes empty neither, imagine the time you’ll need to “archive” [elsewhere] a few thousands mails.
SimplyMoroccan said
By the way, how come you’re not in the Moroccan aggregator http://www.maroc-blogs.com?
Yassine Sabir said
I once visited it but was too lazy to drop them an eamil to get referenced. I don’t see why they can’t add a simple “Add” button there??? I’ll do that later for sure.
SimplyMoroccan said
Too lazy = less exposure.
It can’t be automatic because then it will be flooded with spam, and blogs wouldn’t be checked first before being added.
Yassine Sabir said
You’re right Mr. Simply Moroccan. I have just sent them an application to get my blogs there. It would be great if they had a widget to add on blogs!
Thanks
SimplyMoroccan said
That is funny
. I am not a Mr, I am a Miss ^^. I don’t know why everyone thinks that I am a man!
PS: I am inviting you to participate in SimplyMoroccan’s Competition, check it out in my blog!