Project Inbox 2026 - ratfactor
As I mentioned earlier in<br>Finishing Things, my personal email inbox has<br>become a source of frustration… and shame.
Rather than re-write it, I’ll just quote what I wrote about how this<br>happened:
The thing is, once things turned hard, my the inbox collected a backlog for<br>the first time in my life. And the more it backed up, the hard it became for<br>me to face it. It snowballed. Eventually I found the whole thing so<br>overwhelming that I stopped being able to dash off quick replies entirely. I<br>haven’t responded to any personal email short of emergencies in about half a<br>year.
Well, here it is, the Inbox of Treasure:
None of this is spam, newsletters, or billing notifications. I’ve already<br>culled those. This is just heartfelt messages from amazing people.
And I was wrong about "half a year". Some of these messages date back to last August.<br>That’s three quarters of a year. Yipe!
How does one measure a volume of email?
All of these are substantive messages, but they vary in length.
It would be interesting to know what the word-count is on all of these…<br>Oh great, I’ve just<br>nerd sniped (xkcd.com)<br>myself. One moment, please…
Do you want web pages? Because that’s how you get web pages:
Getting the wordcount of my email inbox.
…Okay, I’m done. Are you ready? The total wordcount in my inbox is: 52,358 words .
No wonder I was a bit overwhelmed. That’s literally a book.
Anyway, the plan
I had planned to write two more articles before starting Project Inbox.<br>But at the rate I’m getting those written, some of the messages in my<br>inbox will be celebrating their first birthdays before I reply to them.
So I’m starting it now.
Again, quoting myself:
…I’m going to turn my inbox into a real project. I won’t work on anything<br>else during that time. Just email. Until the inbox is empty. My thinking is<br>that I just need to […] give myself permission to concentrate on just this<br>one task. We’ll see if it works.
We’ll see how that goes. I’m thinking it will work. But what do I tell people<br>when I respond to them after such a log hiatus?
I’ve been keeping this link around for just this moment:
Do not apologize for replying late to my email (ploum.net):
"Apologizing for taking time to reply to my email is awkward and makes me uncomfortable."
Noted! I would normally apologize because some of these messages date back<br>to mid-2025 and I do feel bad about it. But I don’t want to compound<br>the trouble by making people feel guilty about me feeling guilty.
Which reminds me, I found a few legit email messages in my IMAP Spam folder.<br>Unfortunately, that folder auto-clears after 30 days, so it’s possible I missed<br>some. I plan to update this page when I’m done with the initial inbox clearing.<br>If I haven’t replied to you at that point, I probably lost your email. Sorry!<br>Please re-send if you can.
Lastly, I’ve been toying with various options for a personal database of<br>contacts and I think now would be the perfect time to make another go at<br>it. I have existing notes here: Contacts - ideas and notes.
After the clearing, I intend to get back to my old long-standing<br>habit of keeping up!
Wish me luck… Oh, and if you had ever been considering sending me email,<br>go for it! The reply should come back sooner than 9 months from now.