Debt Relief

Had a mini-disaster a few nights ago and corrupted most of my email inbox (long story), slashing my “To respond to” list from ~150 to ~20. After the initial “Oh, crap” reaction, a strange feeling of peace washed over me, and lingers. Can’t tell you what a relief it is to have that much perceived obligation erased in a flash. I do feel bad about all those great unanswered threads vanishing into ether, but ultimately, it was like getting a big stinky boot off my neck. 

After witnessing newfound lightness in my step, Amy has promised to start deleting random blocks of messages from my inbox.

Music: David Bowie :: It Ain’t Easy

One Reply to “Debt Relief”

  1. Sounds like the classic study (urban legend?) that found you could throw away everything on your desk and only 10% would ever come back to haunt you. Not sure if this was a real study but I recall it being credited to someplace like IBM.

    My problem is that I know the stuff that will come back to haunt me, but it’s usually the much more fun to respond to other stuff first.

    Maybe we need TIVO-like expiriing email that clears itself after a few days with no reply. If you think about it that’s sort of the AOL model, where email is gone a few days after you read it and you have to intentionally save it or mark is as “Keep as New” if you want more time to ponder and reply.

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