It's a Wonder Some People Function at All
A former co-worker of mine used to complain quite a bit about her email being very slow on her computer. Now, she had the oldest computer in the office, and I often just chalked it up to her machine being low on memory.
Today, I finally started prepping it for whenever we actually hire an intern, and discovered the actual root of the problem: there were 50,000 emails in Outlook. That's not a typo--she had 33,000 emails in her Inbox, another 10,000 in her Archived Sent folder, and the remaining 7,000 spread throughout client-specific folders beneath those.
I had been asked to keep an archive of her email "just in case," but before I could even begin to think of that, I went to work deleting. The Archived Sent folder went immediately, leaving me 40,000 to go. Of those emails, nearly 30,000 were from various email alerts and newsletters to which she had subscribed--7,000 were just Google Alerts alone. Now, while we're supposed to certain, client-related online publications, many of the ones she had were not relevant, or narrowed down enough to be useful. And besides--wouldn't you every so often delete those emails, just because they're no longer relevant?
The machine is currently archiving the remaining 9,500 emails I ended up keeping. Still way too many, but I've devoted as much time as I can to reviewing and deleting the old junk off that computer.
Today, I finally started prepping it for whenever we actually hire an intern, and discovered the actual root of the problem: there were 50,000 emails in Outlook. That's not a typo--she had 33,000 emails in her Inbox, another 10,000 in her Archived Sent folder, and the remaining 7,000 spread throughout client-specific folders beneath those.
I had been asked to keep an archive of her email "just in case," but before I could even begin to think of that, I went to work deleting. The Archived Sent folder went immediately, leaving me 40,000 to go. Of those emails, nearly 30,000 were from various email alerts and newsletters to which she had subscribed--7,000 were just Google Alerts alone. Now, while we're supposed to certain, client-related online publications, many of the ones she had were not relevant, or narrowed down enough to be useful. And besides--wouldn't you every so often delete those emails, just because they're no longer relevant?
The machine is currently archiving the remaining 9,500 emails I ended up keeping. Still way too many, but I've devoted as much time as I can to reviewing and deleting the old junk off that computer.