Most of us who are somewhat addicted to the internet tend to leave our google/yahoo mailboxes open in a browser tab for the greater part of the day, or leave some other email client open and running on our system. We keep checking it every five minutes or so on a good day and are incredibly disappointed every time we see the unread mail count in our inbox stagnating at the same boring old number. What's more irksome is the spam mail. Some notification about discounts from some company we had bought stuff from eons back. We are of course too lazy to actually click on the mail, scroll down to the bottom of the message, click on a link that says "unsubscribe", wait for the less-than-usually-fast internet to take us to that page, then maybe enter some account information, and confirm that we do indeed want to "unsubscribe". Hitting delete seems the easier way out. Yes, we are obsessed with short term benefits over well-considered long term gain.
We all know that mail should be checked regularly but sparingly. That's what our mothers told us, right? Growing up is a lot to do with unlearning what our mothers taught us, but unfortunately the odd good crumb there gets thrown out too. Actually it seems like something to try out. Every time we check our mailbox, there should be at least one or two new messsages to keep us interested. There should be that sharp Santa Claus beneficiary sense of expectation when we open the inbox. I will try and keep my mail-checking limited to 4 or 5 times a day, starting today. I will not stay permanently logged into gmail or the social networking websites (well that calls for an entirely new post). Let's see how this middle of the week resolution works out. How much productivity, fulfilment, quality and happiness this ends up adding to my life. The trouble with such resolutions is one feels worse if one is unable to keep them. Resolutions should be optimizable too. Like if I can climb down from ∞ to 15 in stead of 5, it'll still be an accomplishment.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
2 comments:
Well, then you should perhaps also decide that you would keep your cellphone switched off from 8 to 7, would not talk trash except between 12 and 1, and so on!
gmail rocks!
here's what I do -- I direct all my mails from various accounts into one gmail account, and then use "gmail notifier" (which notifies ...with name of sender, subject, and first line of mail....on my desktop every time a new mail arrives, saving me the trouble of refreshing and checking all mailboxes) for the consolidated account.
I also set up "filter"s in the consolidated account, which send emails from regular e-mailers into folders like "friends", "family", "mailing list A", "mailing list B" and so on ...directly, i.e. skipping inbox. So these emails (which are important and good to read but not urgent) do not show up in the notifier beeps.
I check them only from time-to-time where time-to-time is a function of busy-ness 8)
Post a Comment