Declaring Email and RSS Feed Bankruptcy

Following on from yesterday’s Ultimate Guide to (un) Productivity, I have had an extremely productive day, and feel really good about that Baby steps.

An article today in the SMH rang a bell with me (my husband Theo pointed it out).

It’s what I did inadvertently with my Google reader the other day. I was in “list view” and instead of hitting “refresh”, I hit “mark all as read” OOPS! There goes 100+ unread posts in a folder. After momentary panic, I realised it felt good! So I went through my other folders, skimming the headlines, reading those that jumped out at me, and then was absolutely ruthless with the “mark all as read” button (don’t worry – I’m sure your post was one of the ones I read ).

It felt somewhat liberating to start from scratch again! So I can relate to this quote

“I am so far behind on email that I am declaring bankruptcy,” New York-based venture capitalist Fred Wilson wrote in his blog last week.

“If you’ve sent me an email (and you aren’t my wife, partner, or colleague), you might want to send it again. I am starting over.”

I tend to stay on top of my email, and I move emails that require action into a “TO DO” folder.

Anyway, have a look at Under Seige, Users Declare Email Bankruptcy.

The term “email bankruptcy” was coined by Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig in 2004, when he was inundated with an average of 200 non-spam emails a day and had spent 80 hours in a week sorting through unanswered email.

Have you ever declared email or RSS Feed Bankruptcy?