No Inbox Quotes

And the minibar in my hotel room was mysteriously emptied." "By arcane forces beyond the understanding of normal human beings?" asked Myfanwy as she sifted through the in-box. It was the sort of question you learned to ask automatically when you worked with the Checquy. "No, it was me," admitted Shantay without a shred of embarrassment.

Whatever happened to our dreams? The infinite possibilities each day holds should stagger the mind. The sheer number of experiences I could have is uncountable, breathtaking, and I'm sitting here refreshing my inbox. We live trapped in loops, reliving a few days over and over, and we envision only a handful of paths laid out ahead of us. We see the same things each day, we respond the same way, we think the same thoughts, each day a slight variation on the last, every moment smoothly following the gentle curves of societal norms. We act like if we just get through today, tomorrow our dreams will come back to us. And no, I don't have all the answers. I don't know how to jolt myself into seeing what each moment could become. But I do know one thing: the solution doesn't involve watering down my every little idea and creative impulse for the sake of someday easing my fit into a mold. It doesn't involve tempering my life to better fit someone's expectations. It doesn't involve constantly holding back for fear of shaking things up. This is very important, so I want to say it as clearly as I can: FUCK. THAT. SHIT.

I recheck my inbox. Everything’s up to date. I check the clock. Three fifteen P.M. I check my lipstick in the reflection of the shiny wall tile near my computer monitor. I check Joshua, who is glowering at me with contempt. I stare back. Now we are playing the Staring Game. I should mention that the ultimate aim of all our games is to make the other smile, or cry. It’s something like that. I’ll know when I win.

When you make loving others the story of your life, there's never a final chapter, because the legacy continues. You lend your light to one person, and he or she shines it on another and another and another. And I know for sure that in the final analysis of our lives- when the to-do lists are no more, when the frenzy is finished, when our e-mail inboxes are empty- the only thing that will have any lasting value is whether we've loved others and whether they've loved us.

I remember exactly how it felt to see that first message from him in my inbox. It was a little bit surreal. He wanted to know about me. For the next few days at school after that, it felt like I was a character in a movie. I could almost imagine a close-up of my face, projected wide-screen. It's strange, because in reality, I'm not the leading guy. Maybe I'm the best friend.

The grief hits her hard one day. the way it can't be controlled. The way that yesterday can be good and so can the day before, and so can the week and fortnight before that, but then today comes and she's back to zero. How she can't type words into her computer or even press the in-box for her mail. The effort it takes to walk. How words can't form in her mouth and how her blood feels paralyzed.

There are other ways to get back at your phone you know, if it's being naughty, you could simply make it communicate in Japanese,put it on silent, or even take away its battery privileges.

In talking with happy people, I found they've all figured out ways to focus on three things: Good Decisions, Good Relationships and Good Work. (paraphrased from the Inbox Zero Video)

Last year in a library in Alaska I read a folk tale in a random book on a random shelf & have been thinking about it since & today I wrote the librarian w/ no book title or author & in 2 hrs I had a scan of the story & cover in my inbox -- Librarians should be running everything. [Twitter]

No one likes the feeling that other people are waiting— impatiently—for a response. At the beginning of the day, faced with an overflowing inbox, an array of voice mail messages, and the list of next steps from your last meeting, it’s tempting to “clear the decks” before starting your own work . When you’re up-to-date, you tell yourself, it will be easier to focus. The trouble with this approach is it means spending the best part of the day on other people’s priorities.

A text message visible in his inbox: You’re missing the Independence Day Speech, auto-signed with Ren. Yuan ignores it. The next text plays in his brain when he is not looking at the CRAB: Come on! The war-hero can’t miss the speech in Alphatech when the war hero himself is its owner! Ren.

it is very telling what we don’t hear in eulogies. We almost never hear things like: “The crowning achievement of his life was when he made senior vice president.” Or: “He increased market share for his company multiple times during his tenure.” Or: “She never stopped working. She ate lunch at her desk. Every day.” Or: “He never made it to his kid’s Little League games because he always had to go over those figures one more time.” Or: “While she didn’t have any real friends, she had six hundred Facebook friends, and she dealt with every email in her in-box every night.” Or: “His PowerPoint slides were always meticulously prepared.” Our eulogies are always about the other stuff: what we gave, how we connected, how much we meant to our family and friends, small kindnesses, lifelong passions, and the things that made us laugh.

I get a message from my dad. In the mood I'm in, I tear up to see his name in my inbox, and imagine him down the hall in bed, propped on pillows, emailing me. "Hon, Enjoyed our gelato date the other night. I just want to say I'm proud of you for a lot of reasons. Also, I've attached a picture of my foot." He's such a weirdo goofball. I love him.

That guy’s an asshole,” Leo growled. “Don’t think I’m going to forget what he said to you. Let’s see how he likes it when he wakes up in the morning and finds himself with several gay porn site subscriptions. His inbox will be flooded with so many wieners he’ll have to change his name to Oscar Mayer.

But it’s better to disappoint a few people over small things, than to surrender your dreams for an empty inbox. Otherwise you’re sacrificing your potential for the illusion of professionalism. THE

Maybe this is what it’s like when you die. Your inbox stays empty. At first, you just think nobody’s answering, so you check your SENT box to make sure your outgoing mail is okay, and then you check your ISP to make sure your account is still active, and eventually you have to conclude that you’re dead.

Of course I know what she means. To make art in fandom is to follow your passion at the risk of never being taken seriously. I've written dozens of fics-put them together and you'd have several novels-but who knows what a college admissions officer will think of that as a pastime. Where does 12,000 Tumbler followers rate in relation to a spot in the National Honor Society in their minds? Every week I get anonymous messages in my inbox telling me I should write a real book. Well, haven't I already? What makes what I do different from "real writing"? Is it that I don't use original characters? I guess that makes every Hardy Boys edition, every Star Wars book, every spinoff, sequel, fairy-tale re-telling, historical romance, comic book reboot, and the music Hamilton "not real writing". Or is it that a real book is something printed, that you can hold in your hand, not something you write on the internet? Or is "real writing" something you sell in a store, not give away for free? No, I know it's none of these things. It's merely this: "real writing" is done by serious people, whereas fanfiction is written by weirdos, teenagers, degenerates, and women.

It is impossible to express the experiences you have below the surface with words, when water gently caresses your face and body, the pulse decreases and your brain relaxes. You are immediately cut off from the stress and hustle of everyday life when you are below the surface – there are no noisy telephones or SMS messages, no inboxes full of mail, no electrical bills, or other trivialities of everyday life taking up time and energy. There is nothing connecting you to the surface but the same withheld breath that connects you to life. There is only you and a growing pressure on your chest that feels like a loving hug and the vibrations from the deep quiet tone of the sea. It is quite possible that this deep quiet tone is none other than the mantra Om, the sound of the universe, trickling life into every cell of your body.

Your beautiful password is dead. It was simply too complex and too damned exquisite to live in your humdrum world, your humdrum mind. Now you must face the ignominy of clicking the password reset button for the 58th time this year. And as you trudge dolefully toward your inbox, waiting for the help letter to arrive, the cruel laughter of His Computerised Majesty rings in your ears. You have failed, human. You have failed.

Just be here, I thought to myself one night. Just be right where I am now, I vowed as I snuggled in close. Don’t think about the dishes piled in the sink, or the messages in the inbox, or the trash needing to go curbside, or the ache in your hip in need of an ice pack. Just think about the precious girl in need of a little time with her mom.

The deepest need of my soul isn't a personal organizer or an empty inbox. The deepest need of my soul is Christ.

I clicked on mail and downloaded my e-mails, chewing my nails as they popped one by one into the in-box.

This in-box full of unopened messages is the truest reminder that we are temporary fixtures in a permanent world.

There's a dolphin's brain in my in-box but come see me in forty-eight hours.

If you’re like me, you have far too many things you want to do, read, see, test, and experience. Your inbox is a treasure trove of possibilities. To a creative mind, that’s very enticing. It’s easy for an optimist to keep fifty, a hundred, or even a thousand e-mails hovering in their inbox in the hopes that, someday soon, they’ll get a chance to give each opportunity the precious time that it deserves. But guess what? That’s never gonna happen.

His thought about the bird halts as the CRAB in his wrist glows. CRAB—Conservable RNA Augmented Body, the faithful servant for a citizen, as the advertisements from the World Government say. This parasitic bio-computer, installed in his left wrist, bears his identity. A hologram projects on it when he fists that hand near his chest. A text message visible in his inbox: You’re missing the Independence Day Speech, auto-signed with Ren. Yuan ignores it. The next text plays in his brain when he is not looking at the CRAB: Come on! The war-hero can’t miss the speech in Alphatech when the war hero himself is its owner! Ren. Yuan doesn’t reply to Ren Agnello, the CEO of Alphatech—the world’s leading transport and robotics industry, of which the Monk is the founder. Well, one of the two founders.

I find reality pretty difficult. I find the business of getting out of bed and getting on with the day really hard. I find picking up my phone to be a mammoth fucking struggle. The number on my inbox. The friends who won’t see me anymore. The food pictures and porn videos, the bombings and beheadings, the moral ambivalence you have to have to just be able to carry on with your day. I find the knowledge that we’re all just atoms and one day we’ll stop and be dirt in the ground, I find that overwhelmingly disappointing.

The children who were able to sit for three minutes with a marshmallow on the table in front of them without eating it were rewarded with two marshmallows when the experimenter returned. But that's as crazy as inbox-watching. Krishna said we have the right to our labor, but not to the fruits of our labor. He meant that the piano is its own reward, as is the canvas, the barre, and the movieola. Fuck the marshmallows.

Maxine will sometimes compliment us on our hair or other aspects of our scruffy appearance. The next day, or even later the same day, she'll send an all-caps e-mail asking why a certain form is not on her desk. This will prompt a peppy reply, one barely stifling a howl of fear: Hey Maxine! The document you want was actually put in your in-box yesterday around lunchtime. I also e-mailed it to you and Russell. Let me know if you can't find it! Thanks! Laars P.S. I'm also attaching it again as a Word doc, just in case. There's so much wrong here: the fake-vague around lunchtime, the nonsensical Thanks, the quasi-casual postscript. The exclamation points look downright psychotic.

I hope this email finds you well I hope this email finds you calm. I hope this email finds you unflustered about your inbox. I hope this email finds you in a state of acceptance that this email isn’t exactly important in the cosmic scheme of things. I hope this email finds your work happily unfinished. I hope this email finds you beneath a beautiful sky with the wind tenderly caressing your hair like an invisible mother. I hope this email finds you lying on a beach, or maybe beside a lake. I hope this email finds you with the sunlight on your face. I hope this email finds you eating some blissfully sweet grapes. I hope this email finds you well but, you know what, it is okay if it doesn’t because we all have bad days. I hope this email finds you reading a really good poem or something else that requires no direct response from you. I hope this email finds you far away from this email.

Respondents had been so overwhelmed by their in-box they'd declared "e-mail bankruptcy.

I knew nothing of the plot or the characters. It didn’t matter. I needed a show like a nympho needs a kiss. The casting notice had hit my inbox around 6am that

Inbox *** Oh, my Fabulous Beauty I want you to become my mentor For affection, but not writing For that Where should I apply? Please message inbox.

If our ideologies differ, please do not send a violent personal message in my inbox. This is worthless because my opinion changes on a daily basis.

All the Lightning Loneliest Human Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox,

Emilia typed in her password and checked her inbox. A review by the Secretariat de Gobernación of drug cartel activities across Mexico. A report of a robbery in Acapulco’s poorest barrio neighborhood that would probably never be investigated. Notice of a reward for a child kidnapped in Ixtapa who was almost certainly dead by now. Her phone rang. It was the desk sergeant saying that a Señor Rooker wished to see her. Emilia avoided Rico’s eye as she said, yes, the sergeant could let el señor pass into the detectives’ area. A minute later Rucker was standing by her desk, sweat beaded on his forehead. The starched collar of his shirt was damp. “There’s a head,” he said breathlessly. “Someone’s head in a bucket on the hood of my car.

I called Matt from Columbia when I needed help." "Yeah," Nicky said, unimpressed. "So we all heard. You called Matt, gave him your 'I'm fine' song and dance routine, and then hitchhiked with strangers back to campus. Maybe you remember?" Nicky waited, but Neil couldn't defend himself against an accusation like that. "Anyway, you're welcome. I just saved you at least two hundred dollars in intensive therapy." Neil didn't think Nicky wearing down his guard was something to be grateful for, but he obediently said, "Thank you." "You ever say that like it's not a question?" Nicky asked, looking pained. "Oh well. I'll take my victories where I can. Focus on the battles first, then win the war, right? I don't know how the quote actually goes but you know what I mean. So where was I?" It didn't take him long to remember. He chattered away a mile a minute about his upcoming presentation. Neil let it go in one ear and out the other. His mind was more on the phone still sitting in his hands than the put-upon tone of Nicky's voice. When Nicky finally turned away to harass Aaron about something, Neil flipped his phone open. He went past his packed inbox to his call history. It hadn't changed; Andrew's name was still the only one there.

I’m fairly certain that one day there will be three numbers engraved on my tombstone as a legacy and a warning: my birth date, my death date, and the number of unopened emails still awaiting a response in my inbox.

Do you use online or “cloud” file storage services like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Microsoft SkyDrive to back up or store your pictures, files, and music? The key to unlocking access to those files also lies in your inbox.

In the morning when I saw Ivan's name in the in-box I almost started to cry. It reminded me of a kind of torture I had read about where afterward the captors returned your senses to you one by one, and you felt so grateful that you told them everything.

My in-box floods, as it did last summer, with alarming crime-alert messages from campus security. Shooting in the early evening. Sodomy in the morning. Decapitation at 3:30 in the afternoon. I wonder when is a nonbeheading time to go out and buy ginger ale.

Thanks to my librarians and booksellers who recommend my books - you are magic. Thanks to the bloggers and everyday readers who tell a friend, " You've gotta read this." Thanks to the readers who write me nice notes, which always tend to hit my inbox on my lowest days.

And she’d also found Logan again. Now he was her … what? New-old boyfriend? Lover? Skype buddy? Pen pal with benefits? Whatever his title, his e-mails filled her inbox. Sometimes he sent five a day, short and quipping. Other times he sent longer, more serious ones. She kept her tone light when she replied. That’d always been her MO—a joke, a jab. A way to deflect from what she was really feeling. A way to keep the nonstop ache of missing him from becoming too painful to survive. And honestly, what was there to say that would come close to what she felt? The moments they’d spent together before he’d shipped out on his latest naval tour had been the most peaceful she could remember—even with her anxiety about her dad. It’d been the first time she’d felt complete in a long time. And then, just like that, he was gone again.

Set your 3 MITs (Most Important Tasks) each morning. Single-task. When you work on a task, don’t switch to other tasks. Process your in-box to empty. Check e-mail just twice a day. Exercise five to ten minutes a day. Work while disconnected, with no distractions. Follow a morning routine.

The documents inbox138 described a world in which money was everything- not just the means of sustaining life but the purpose of living it. ... If that was how the old world worked--if that was all they really cared about--maybe it was better that it had fallen apart. Maybe it was inevitable

Similarly, email’s uncertainty keeps us checking and pecking. It provides good news and bad, exciting information as well as frivolity, messages from our closest loved ones and from anonymous strangers. All that uncertainty provides a powerful draw to see what we might find when we next check our inboxes.

You're clear you don't want to act on your crush, so trust that clarity and be grateful that you have it. My inbox is jammed with emails from people who are not so clear. They're tortured by indecision and guilt and lust. They love X but want to fuck Z....Z is like a motorcycle with no one on it. Beautiful. Going nowhere.

Isolation and “control” might produce quieter life. But, peace isn’t a quiet life, peace is a quiet soul. Peace is the gift of Jesus through the work of Jesus that we can have no matter what’s going on in our living rooms or our inboxes or our Facebook feeds. The loudest of lives can’t overwhelm the quiet that comes from Christ.

Sooooooooo much literary fiction I get in the old query inbox is plotless. It's just a character musing about the vagaries and eccentricities of everyday existence. The prose is lush, the character detailed, but one problem - absolutely nothing is happening and thus it's (forgive me) extremely boring. Good literary fiction has a plot.

Remember, looking at bad news doesn’t mean good news isn’t happening. It’s happening everywhere. It’s happening right now. Around the world. In hospitals, at weddings, in schools and offices and maternity wards, at airport arrival gates, in bedrooms, in inboxes, out in the street, in the kind smile of a stranger. A billion unseen wonders of everyday life.

looked for the TV remote but couldn’t see it. Then I located it, peeking out from behind Kathy’s open laptop on the coffee table. I reached for it, but was so stoned I knocked over the laptop. I propped the laptop up again—and the screen came to life. It was logged into her email account. For some reason, I kept staring at it. I was transfixed—her in-box stared at me like a gaping hole. I couldn’t look away. All kinds of things jumped out before I knew what I was reading: words such as “sexy” and “fuck” in the email headings—and repeated emails from BADBOY22. If only I’d stopped there. If only I’d got up and walked away—but I didn’t. I clicked on the most recent email and opened it: Subject: Re: little miss fuck From: Katerama_1 To: BADBOY22 I’m on the bus. So horny for you. I can smell you on me. I feel like a slut! Kxx

In particular, interrogative e-mails like these generate an initial instinct to dash off the quickest possible response that will clear the message—temporarily—out of your inbox. A quick response will, in the short term, provide you with some minor relief because you’re bouncing the responsibility implied by the message off your court and back onto the sender’s. This relief, however, is short-lived, as this responsibility will continue to bounce back again and again, continually sapping your time and attention. I suggest, therefore, that the right strategy when faced with a question of this type is to pause a moment before replying and take the time to answer the following key prompt: What is the project represented by this message, and what is the most efficient (in terms of messages generated) process for bringing this project to a successful conclusion? Once you’ve answered this question for yourself, replace a quick response with one that takes the time to describe the process you identified, points out the current step, and emphasizes the step that comes next. I call this the process-centric approach to e-mail, and it’s designed to minimize both the number of e-mails you receive and the amount of mental clutter they generate.

The second reason that a culture of connectivity makes life easier is that it creates an environment where it becomes acceptable to run your day out of your inbox—responding to the latest missive with alacrity while others pile up behind it, all the while feeling satisfyingly productive (more on this soon). If e-mail were to move to the periphery of your workday, you’d be required to deploy a more thoughtful approach to figuring out what you should be working on and for how long. This type of planning is hard. Consider, for example, David Allen’s Getting Things Done task-management methodology, which is a well-respected system for intelligently managing competing workplace obligations. This system proposes a fifteen-element flowchart for making a decision on what to do next! It’s significantly easier to simply chime in on the latest cc’d e-mail thread.

I didn’t want to press Veronica. I thought I’d wait for her to get in touch this time. I checked my inbox rather too assiduously. Of course, I wasn’t expecting a great effusion, but hoped, perhaps, for a polite message that it had been nice to see me properly after all these years. Well, perhaps it hadn’t been. Perhaps she’d gone on a trip. Perhaps her server was down. Who said that thing about the eternal hopefulness of the human heart?

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Another benefit of a sender filter is that it resets expectations. The most crucial line in my description is the following: “I’ll only respond to those proposals that are a good match for my schedule and interests.” This seems minor, but it makes a substantial difference in how my correspondents think about their messages to me. The default social convention surrounding e-mail is that unless you’re famous, if someone sends you something, you owe him or her a response. For most, therefore, an inbox full of messages generates a major sense of obligation. By instead resetting your correspondents’ expectations to the reality that you’ll probably not respond, the experience is transformed. The inbox is now a collection of opportunities that you can glance at when you have the free time—seeking out those that make sense for you to engage. But the pile of unread messages no longer generates a sense of obligation. You could, if you wanted to, ignore them all, and nothing bad would happen. Psychologically, this can be freeing.

There’s mounting evidence that processing your email in batches is much more efficient and less stress inducing than checking it throughout the day. This is because our brains take time to switch between tasks, so it’s better to focus on answering emails all at once. I know what you’re thinking—you can’t wait all day to check email. I understand. I too need to check my inbox to make sure there’s nothing truly urgent. Checking email isn’t so much the problem; it’s the habitual rechecking that gets us into trouble.

The biggest problem we face today is “reactionary workflow.” We have started to live a life pecking away at the many inboxes around us, trying to stay afloat by responding and reacting to the latest thing: e-mails, text messages, tweets, and so on. Through our constant connectivity to each other, we have become increasingly reactive to what comes to us rather than being proactive about what matters most to us. Being informed and connected becomes a disadvantage when the deluge supplants your space to think and act.

Idealization is the first step in the psychopath’s grooming process. Also known as love-bombing, it quickly breaks down your guard, unlocks your heart, and modifies your brain chemicals to become addicted to the pleasure centers firing away. The excessive flattery and compliments play on your deepest vanities and insecurities—qualities you likely don’t even know you possess. They will feed you constant praise and attention through your phone, Facebook Timeline, and email inbox. Within a matter of weeks, the two of you will have your own set of inside jokes, pet names, and cute songs. Looking back, you’ll see how insane the whole thing was. But when you’re in the middle of it, you can’t even imagine life without them.

When you skip a meal, telling your rumbling stomach that food is coming later in the day, and therefore it has no reason to fear starvation, doesn’t alleviate the powerful sensation of hunger. Similarly, explaining to your brain that the neglected interactions in your overfilled inbox have little to do with your survival doesn’t seem to prevent a corresponding sense of background anxiety. To your entrenched social circuitry, evolved over millennia of food shortages mitigated through strategic alliances, these unanswered messages become the psychological equivalent of ignoring a tribe member who might later prove key to surviving the next drought. From this perspective, the crowded email inbox is not just frustrating—it’s a matter of life or death.

Raymond sent me an electronic mail message at work the next week—it was very odd, seeing his name in my in-box. As I’d expected, he was semiliterate. Hi E, hope all good with u. Got a wee favor to ask. Sammy’s son Keith has invited me to his 40th this Saturday (ended up staying late at that party BTW, it was a rite laugh). Fancy being my plus one? It’s at the golf club, there’s a buffet? No worries if not—let me no. R A buffet. In a golf club. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. And two parties in a month! More parties than I had been to in two decades. I hit reply: Dear Raymond, I should be delighted to accompany you to the birthday celebration. Kind regards, Eleanor Oliphant (Ms.) Moments later, I received a response: Twenty-first-century communication. I fear for our nation’s standards of literacy.

Constant communication is not something that gets in the way of real work; it has instead become totally intertwined in how this work actually gets done—preventing easy efforts to reduce distractions through better habits or short-lived management stunts like email-free Fridays. Real improvement, it became clear, would require fundamental change to how we organize our professional efforts. It also became clear that these changes can’t come too soon: whereas email overload emerged as a fashionable annoyance in the early 2000s, it has recently advanced into a much more serious problem, reaching a saturation point for many in which their actual productive output gets squeezed into the early morning, or evenings and weekends, while their workdays devolve into Sisyphean battles against their inboxes—a uniquely misery-inducing approach to getting things done.

Sometimes we set lower goals because we “fear success.” When people talk about fear of success, they’re talking about anticipatory anxiety related to what they predict success would bring. You can confront and problem-solve this fear, but first you need to identify what you’re actually anxious about. Experiment: Are there goals that interest you, but anxiety is causing you to choose smaller targets than you might otherwise? Can you identify specifically what it is you’re worried about? For example, you might fear that success will mean drowning in your inbox and other increased social demands. Your worry might be that you won’t get the alone time you need to feel balanced. How could you problem-solve this fear? For example, what might you do to cope if greater success meant receiving a lot more email? What larger targets would you set if you didn’t fear success?

This meant that I went from being the person who responded to everyone all the time, to being a person who doesn’t respond to hardly anyone, at all. At first, it was hard. My text inbox went from typically ten unread messages to over four hundred. I would read letters from readers, and instead of responding with a novel-length letter, I began saving them to a folder and sending out energetic blessings instead. If an email landed in my inbox, I would let it sit sometimes for up to seven days before even opening it. I got to things when I got to things. At first, some people were super annoyed, but after a few years of this practice, people came to understand I don’t respond to things immediately, and sometimes I don’t respond at all. To me, this is the only sane way to live. I’m not chained to my phone or to other people’s expectations of responsiveness. I don’t prove my love by texting back in two minutes.

Also as in natural settings, in workplaces without well-defined processes, energy minimization becomes prioritized. This is fundamental human nature: if there’s no structure surrounding how hard efforts are coordinated, we default to our instinct to not expend any more energy than is necessary. Most of us are guilty of acting on this instinct when given a chance. An email arrives that informally represents a new responsibility for you to manage; because there’s no formal process in place to assign the work or track its progress, you seek instead the easiest way to get the responsibility off your plate—even if just temporarily—so you send a quick reply asking for an ambiguous clarification. Thus unfolds a game of obligation hot potato, as messages bounce around, each temporarily shifting responsibility from one inbox to another, until a deadline or irate boss finally stops the music, leading to a last-minute scramble to churn out a barely acceptable result. This, too, is obviously a terribly inefficient way to get work done.

Double-clicking on his inbox, Jason noted that one of the three messages was from Suzy, aka ButterfliesInMyTummy, and his mood lifted. It was the fourth or fifth message they’d exchanged, and they were just starting to move beyond the tedious small-talk stage. He skimmed through the message, growing increasingly impatient. Suzy favoured those little face icons. The whole page was littered with them – smiley faces, sad faces, surprised faces, embarrassed faces. Why couldn’t she just use words like everyone else? She also put five or six exclamation marks after a sentence, or added extra vowels to words, so everything was sooooooooo much fun or soooooooooo boring. It wound Jason up when people couldn’t write properly. He wasn’t asking for brain of Britain, but he liked a woman to be able to write a sentence that started with a capital letter and ended with a full stop and at least made an attempt at the Queen’s English. At least it wasn’t in text speak. He refused to answer the messages that spelled thanks ‘tnx’. Britain didn’t go through two World Wars so that the English language could be mutilated beyond recognition.

AS ALL-CONSUMING AS the economic crisis was, my fledgling administration didn’t have the luxury of putting everything else on hold, for the machinery of the federal government stretched across the globe, churning every minute of every day, indifferent to overstuffed in-boxes and human sleep cycles. Many of its functions (generating Social Security checks, keeping weather satellites aloft, processing agricultural loans, issuing passports) required no specific instructions from the White House, operating much like a human body breathes or sweats, outside the brain’s conscious control. But this still left countless agencies and buildings full of people in need of our daily attention: looking for policy guidance or help with staffing, seeking advice because some internal breakdown or external event had thrown the system for a loop. After our first weekly Oval Office meeting, I asked Bob Gates, who’d served under seven previous presidents, for any advice he might have in managing the executive branch. He gave me one of his wry, crinkly smiles. “There’s only one thing you can count on, Mr. President,” he said. “On any given moment in any given day, somebody somewhere is screwing up.” We went to work trying to minimize screw-ups.

inbox. It was from Ogden Morrow. The subject line read “We Can Dance If We Want To.” There was no text in the body of the e-mail. Just a file attachment—an invitation to one of the most exclusive gatherings in the OASIS: Ogden Morrow’s birthday party. In the real world, Morrow almost never made public appearances, and in the OASIS, he came out of hiding only once a year, to host this event. The invitation featured a photo of Morrow’s world-famous avatar, the Great and Powerful Og. The gray-bearded wizard was hunched over an elaborate DJ mixing board, one headphone pressed to his ear, biting his lower lip in auditory ecstasy as his fingers scratched ancient vinyl on a set of silver turntables. His record crate bore a DON’T PANIC sticker and an anti-Sixer logo—a yellow number six with a red circle-and-slash over it. The text at the bottom read Ogden Morrow’s ’80s Dance Party in celebration of his 73rd birthday! Tonight—10pm OST at the Distracted Globe ADMIT ONE I was flabbergasted. Ogden Morrow had actually taken the time to invite me to his birthday party. It felt like the greatest honor I’d ever received. I called Art3mis, and she confirmed that she’d received the same e-mail. She said she couldn’t pass up an invitation from Og himself

One day Spinner, the woman who runs PR tells me, “I like that idea, but I’m not sure that it’s one-plus-one-equals-three enough.” What does any of this nutty horseshit actually mean? I have no idea. I’m just amazed that hundreds of people can gobble up this malarkey and repeat it, with straight faces. I’m equally amazed by the high regard in which HubSpot people hold themselves. They use the word awesome incessantly, usually to describe themselves or each other. That’s awesome! You’re awesome! No, you’re awesome for saying that I’m awesome! They pepper their communication with exclamation points, often in clusters, like this!!! They are constantly sending around emails praising someone who is totally crushing it and doing something awesome and being a total team player!!! These emails are cc’d to everyone in the department. The protocol seems to be for every recipient to issue his or her own reply-to-all email joining in on the cheer, writing things like “You go, girl!!” and “Go, HubSpot, go!!!!” and “Ashley for president!!!” Every day my inbox fills up with these little orgasmic spasms of praise. At first I ignore them, but then I feel like a grump and decide I should join in the fun. I start writing things like, “Jan is the best!!! Her can-do attitude and big smile cheer me up every morning!!!!!!!” (Jan is the grumpy woman who runs the blog; she scowls a lot.) Sometimes I just write something with lots of exclamation points, like, “Woo-hoo!!!!!!! Congratulations!!!!!!! You totally rock!!!!!!!!!!!!” Eventually someone suspects that I am taking the piss, and I am told to cut that shit out.

She was staring intently at her screen as her email streamed in. I noticed she wasn't breathing, which was something I'd read about: email apnea. People unconsciously hold their breath when they're looking at their inboxes.

Baby, If you think, he is sweet and caring to you.. and flirts only with you, you have started liking him.. Pinch wake yourself up.. His inbox tells his story..

Your Computer Screen Computers, even with all their time-saving devices, can actually become one of the most distracting things in our life. In order to keep your computer use stream-lined, I recommend these simplifying techniques: • Clear your email inbox every day. • Uninstall unused software. • Use folders to sort documents. • Hide desktop icons. • Use a simple word-processor. • Limit your time on social networking sites.

Never leave a read email in your inbox.

Email, for example, utilizes all three variable reward types. What subconsciously compels us to check our email? First, there is uncertainty surrounding who might be sending us a message. We have a social obligation to respond to emails and a desire to be seen as agreeable (rewards of the tribe). We may also be curious about what information is in the email. Perhaps something related to our career or business awaits us? Checking email informs us of opportunities or threats to our material possessions and livelihood (rewards of the hunt). Lastly, email is in itself a task — challenging us to sort, categorize and act to eliminate unread messages. We are motivated by the uncertain nature of our fluctuating email count and feel compelled to gain control of our inbox (rewards of the self).

Tool 1: Evernote I’ve already mentioned Evernote, but it’s worth bringing up again. I use Evernote as my personal “ubiquitous idea capture device.” Not only is it good for recording messages and ideas, it also fully syncs between mobile and desktop devices. This means I can record an idea in my car and have it accessible when I’m in front of my computer. How is Evernote helpful for streamlining your inbox efforts? It can handle email services, collaboration ideas, reminders and anything that might be important for your job. If you’re running errands and suddenly remember that you have to email someone, then you can create an “Email Reminders” folder on Evernote and have the list ready to go when processing your inbox. Tool 2: Sanebox    Sanebox is a third-party program that works with all email clients. Its purpose is to only allow important messages to show up in your inbox. The rest are sent to a separate folder. Then at the end of the day (or a time that you specify), it will send you a message that contains everything in the “separate” folder. The main point behind this tool is to rate the emails you receive based on your personal reads, replies and when you mark things “up” as important. Therefore, the more you use the system, the more accurate it becomes.

But it’s better to disappoint a few people over small things, than to surrender your dreams for an empty inbox. Otherwise you’re sacrificing your potential for the illusion of professionalism.

You know you’re getting somewhere as a writer when the rejection letters mean as much as spam in your inbox.

The same thing happens with emails. Most people open their inbox and see ten new unread messages. Almost everyone will click each message open, read it, and then move on to the next message. If an email requires some action, they’ll get back to it later—in which case they’ll have to re-read the message! Remember, touching something once doesn’t mean you have to-do everything yourself. Delegating an item is almost always the most time efficient thing to-do, so if you touch it once and delegate to somebody, do it. Also, not every task should be touched immediately. A large project or something that is going to run into a previously scheduled time block should be scheduled for later. Most people will have a rule of thumb about when to action something immediately. Most people I know will take immediate action on something if it takes less than five or ten minutes.

20. Declutter Your Inbox By Identifying Opportunities to Unsubscribe From Junk Email Junk emails can stack up and destroy your focus and attention very quickly.

it’s better to disappoint a few people over small things, than to surrender your dreams for an empty inbox. Otherwise you’re sacrificing your potential for the illusion of professionalism.

She leaned forward and placed her chin on her fist. 'So. Can you tell me in a sentence or two how I can fix my life using vaastu shastra techniques?' He smiled. 'You'll be surprised to hear that I can. These things may be complex on the surface, but they are built on very simple truths.' He leaned back and joined his fingertips together, looking up and thinking for a few seconds. 'Let me put it like this. Consider your desk, whether it is an office desk, or a table at home where you receive and write letters. What happens at that desk? Answer: every day, a number of letters are received. Or faxes. Or advertisements. These are all items with potential energy applications. They are all bits of paper urging you to react in some way—to buy a product, or respond with a phone call, or change the way you do something. Now what we should do is to react to that potential energy transaction in some way—and thus burn up the energy in it. We should either fulfill it, by doing what it says, or we should make a decision that we are not going to fulfill it, but instead throw the paper away. But, instead, we take that piece of paper and we balance it on our desk, unwilling to make an immediate decision. This happens to a number of pieces of paper every day, and then before we know it, there is a huge pile of pieces of paper on the desk. When it gets too high, we take the pile of paper and we tuck it into a drawer. When the drawer gets so full it cannot close, we tuck the paper into a cardboard box and stick it under the desk. Soon our desks are jammed with paper—underneath, inside & on top.' 'Good God! You've been spying on me!' 'Alas, it is what most people's desks look like.' 'What's the effect of all these unfulfilled bits of paper? What did you call it—potential energy transactions?' 'I shall tell you. The day comes when you arrive at your desk, and you have lots of work to do, but you can't do it. You feel an incredible amount of inertia. You can't get started. And you have no idea why.' 'You peeping Tom! You've been staring at me through my office window.' 'The reason why you can't get started is that your desk is swamped with frozen energy. It is lying there, waiting to be handled. But the inertia infects everything you do, so that you end up unable to do anything.' She shook her head. 'It's awful, but it all rings true. What about computers? I use mostly email these days.' 'They're just the same. The only difference is that instead of physical letters arriving at your desk, emails arrive in your inbox. Again, each of them is a potential energy transaction. And again, the right thing to do would be to delete each one, or reply to each one—and then delete it. But that's not what we do, is it?' 'It is not.' 'We leave them there in our inboxes.' She nodded guiltily. 'And soon there are 600 emails in our inboxes.' '800.' 'And eventually, we select them all and stick them in a file called "archive"—which is simply the computer equivalent of the cardboard box under the desk. And the result is the same. Our email systems become full of frozen energy, & inertia spreads out of it. We find ourselves unable to do any useful work.' 'I've often wondered why I feel like I am walking in treacle. So what should one do about all this?' Sinha waved a bony index finger at her. 'This is what I recommend. Divide all your paperwork into 2 piles. One of stuff that is useless and should be thrown away. And one of stuff which you think may be of use one day. Then you throw both piles away.' 'Both piles?' 'Both piles. By that stage, you will have started to feel the benefits that clarity can bring.' 'And I suppose one should delete all one's emails as well.' 'Exactly. Even if you don’t, that nice Mr. Gates has arranged for the computer to crash every few years, so that all your stuff gets wiped out anyway.

perpetual inbox obsession wasn’t an organizational expectation; rather, it was fueled by a deep insecurity that something important was going to happen and that he wouldn’t respond in time to contribute meaningfully to the conversation.

But there’s a right way to overcommunicate and a wrong way. In the Internet Century, the typical method, especially given the ease of the technology, is to share more stuff with more people. See an interesting article? Cut and paste the link into an email and send it to anyone who may be remotely interested. Yay! You’ve overcommunicated! You’ve also wasted hours of people’s time. Overcommunication done wrong leads to a careless proliferation of useless information, an avalanche of drivel piling into already overwhelmed inboxes.

BUILDING RENEWAL INTO YOUR WORKDAY – Tony Schwartz Zeke is a creative director at a large agency. The workday he described when we first met was typical of the managers and leaders I meet in my travels. After six or six and a half hours of sleep—which never felt like enough—Zeke’s alarm went off at 5:30 a.m. each morning. His first move was to take his iPhone off the night table and check his e-mail. He told himself he did this in case something urgent had come in overnight, but the truth was he just couldn’t resist. Zeke tried to get to the gym at least two times a week, but he traveled frequently, and at home he was often just too tired to work out. Once he got to work—around 7:30 a.m. most days—Zeke grabbed a cup of coffee, sat down at his desk, and checked his e-mail again. By then, twenty-five or more new messages were typically waiting in his in-box. If he didn’t have an early meeting, he might be online for an hour or more without once looking up. Zeke’s days were mostly about meetings. They were usually scheduled one after the other with no time in between. As a result, he would race off to the next meeting without digesting what he’d just taken in at the last one. Lunch was something Zeke squeezed in. He usually brought food back to his desk from the cafeteria and worked while he ate. Around two or three in the afternoon, depending on how much sleep he’d gotten the previous night, Zeke began to feel himself fading. Given his company’s culture, taking even a short nap wasn’t an option. Instead, for a quick hit of energy, he found himself succumbing to a piece of someone’s leftover birthday cake, or running to the vending machine for a Snickers bar. With so many urgent demands, Zeke tended to put off any intensive, challenging work for later. By the end of the day, however, he rarely had the energy to get to it. Even so, he found it difficult to leave work with so much unfinished business. By the time he finally did, usually around 7:30 or 8 p.m., he was pretty much running on empty. After dinner, Zeke tried to get to some of the work he had put off earlier in the day. Much of the time, he simply ended up returning to e-mail or playing games online. Either way, he typically stayed up later than he knew he should. How closely does this match your experience? To the extent that it does resonate, how did this happen? Most important, can you imagine working the way you do now for the next ten or twenty years? YOUR CAPACITY IS LIMITED The challenge is that the demand in our lives increasingly exceeds our capacity.

A eulogy is often the first formal marking down of what our lives were about—the foundational document of our legacy. It is how people remember us and how we live on in the minds and hearts of others. And it is very telling what we don’t hear in eulogies. We almost never hear things like: “The crowning achievement of his life was when he made senior vice president.” Or: “He increased market share for his company multiple times during his tenure.” Or: “She never stopped working. She ate lunch at her desk. Every day.” Or: “He never made it to his kid’s Little League games because he always had to go over those figures one more time.” Or: “While she didn’t have any real friends, she had six hundred Facebook friends, and she dealt with every email in her in-box every night.” Or: “His PowerPoint slides were always meticulously prepared.” Our eulogies are always about the other stuff: what we gave, how we connected, how much we meant to our family and friends, small kindnesses, lifelong passions, and the things that made us laugh.

Private Sub Application_Quit() FileCompletedInboxMessages End Sub Sub FileCompletedInboxMessages() Dim myOlApp As New Outlook.Application Dim myNameSpace As Outlook.NameSpace Dim myInbox As Outlook.MAPIFolder Dim myDestFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder Dim myItems As Outlook.Items Dim myItem As Object Set myNameSpace = myOlApp.GetNamespace("MAPI") Set myInbox = myNameSpace.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox) Set myItems = myInbox.Items Set myDestFolder = myInbox.Folders("InboxPro") ' User cleared the follow-up flag Set myItem = myItems.Find("[FLAGSTATUS] = 0") While TypeName(myItem) <> "Nothing" myItem.Move myDestFolder Set myItem = myItems.FindNext Wend   ' User marked as completed Set myItem = myItems.Find("[FLAGSTATUS] = 1") While TypeName(myItem) <> "Nothing" myItem.Move myDestFolder Set myItem = myItems.FindNext Wend End Sub

Deal with email in batches, during limited, fixed times every day Process your inbox to zero at least once a day Constantly create filters, opt-out and delete faster Think before you send Plan filing maintenance once a month  

When writing emails, the rule is, the shorter and more effective your email, the better.

It’s funny how in my previous company, my boss just deleted messages from certain people because those people wrote such long and confusing messages that it’s a waste of time to read and try to decipher.

People tend to take email for granted. They don’t consider the implications of the emails they write and continue to spit out loose, meaningless messages that do not contribute to the work that needs to get done.

You need to speak up and train people to understand what to send you and what not to send you. There are folks out there who like to copy the whole world when they send out messages.

Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.” —John 7:24 (NIV) Driving home from work, I glanced into my rearview mirror to see a beautiful pink sky. It looked like another great sunset. I turned onto my street and noticed three young teenage boys hanging out two doors down from where I live. Too bad they won’t notice this great sunset, I thought. I pulled into my driveway and walked inside. My husband, Johnny, called out from the backyard, “Beautiful sunset tonight! Come on out!” The sky had turned a bright crimson red with streaks of leftover pink etched through it. I glanced to where the boys were still talking. “Those boys have no clue that there is a magnificent sunset happening right before their eyes! Too bad,” I said, shaking my head. At that moment, I heard one of them call out, “Hey, guys, check it out! The sky’s all red! It looks awesome!” “Wow!” the others exclaimed in unison. “Cool!” “Oh my,” I said, dismayed, “I sure jumped to a mighty quick conclusion.” Later that evening, I read an inspirational quote that comes daily to my in-box: “When you’re forming your opinions, do it carefully—go slow; hasty judgments oft are followed by regretting—that I know. —Anon.” After work the next day, I saw the boys again. I pulled the car over and rolled down the window. “Hey, guys,” I called out, “great sunset last night, huh?” “Yes, ma’am!” they all replied. One of the boys held up his cell phone. “I got a really good picture of it on my phone. Want to see?” “Sure,” I said with a big smile. “I’d love to.” Forgive me, Lord, for I truly want to see the best in everyone—right from the start. —Melody Bonnette Swang Digging Deeper: Prv 12:18, 31:26

Or take email. When a computer chimes or a smartphone vibrates with a new message, the brain starts anticipating the momentary distraction that opening an email provides. That expectation, if unsatisfied, can build until a meeting is filled with antsy executives checking their buzzing BlackBerrys under the table, even if they know it’s probably only their latest fantasy football results. (On the other hand, if someone disables the buzzing—and, thus, removes the cue—people can work for hours without thinking to check their in-boxes.)

A survey of high-earning professionals in the corporate world found that 62 percent work more than fifty hours a week and 10 percent work more than eighty hours per week.18 Technology, while liberating us at times from the physical office, has also extended the workday. A 2012 survey of employed adults showed that 80 percent of the respondents continued to work after leaving the office, 38 percent checked e-mail at the dinner table, and 69 percent can’t go to bed without checking their in-box.19

At a conference, people don’t come to a talk to be sold to. As soon as they understand that might be your agenda, they will flee to the safety of their email inbox. It’s

He's cheap and cheesy, coz he loves you. If you want to know how 'expensive' he has been, just check his inbox, see how may gals he disappointed for you.

As I have mentioned, I am not a fan of Facebook. It seems to me like a kind of quiet and subtle virus that worms its way into every aspect of the living tissue of daily existence, until it is impossible to think about cereal without finding an ad for Raisin Bran in your in-box. I am sure the endless intrusive connections can be a great deal of fun for some people, but it really doesn’t make sense for Dexter.

I focus on a project in the morning before scanning my inbox so that I take control of my day instead of my inbox taking control of it. The

Spend the first 15 minutes of your working day prioritizing what to do. • Spend one hour a week for organizing and filing papers. • Spend 15 minutes a day throwing away papers and clearing away your desk • Spend the last 15 minutes of your working day to go through your tasks for tomorrow. What’s important? What’s urgent? • Use your e-mail inbox as a to-do list. Tasks solved get archived and tasks unsolved stay in the inbox. • If there are any e-mails and tasks that you can do in less than 5 minutes, always do them right away! ALWAYS! • Don’t accept any new tasks until you are in control. • Do the job right the first time, so that it doesn’t come back to haunt you and cost you more time later. Do

But it’s better to disappoint a few people over small things, than to surrender your dreams for an empty inbox.