Maybe I should do something about this. 10,000 is a very big, very intimidating number which is why my brain just shuts down when I do anything outside of search for a very specific new e-mail.
What I’ve always done when the unread count gets ridiculous: create a folder (or label or whatever your email client calls it), dump all 10k of those emails into it, and start fresh. Of course, it’s just gonna happen again unless you keep up with the newly clean inbox. Filters (or rules or whatever your email client calls it) can really help.
On gmail I archive everything. Always just a search away if I think I need to find something.
This is a comcast account. I’m wondering if I should switch to a new e-mail. That way if I ever wanted to leave Comcast I wouldn’t be constrained. The problem is I sometimes get e-mail from educators and students asking about CF research as articles written and magazines I’m in include that e-mail address. Right now I just search Cystic Fibrosis to make sure I didn’t miss anything in my inbox.
I get 40 e-mails a day. Most spam, but I’m unsure how to block it without inadvertently blocking something important. For instance, we’re doing real insurance stuff, but I’m getting insurance scam stuff at same time.
You should be able to setup Gmail to pull in all your comcast mail. Then you can archive and search at your leisure.
I use Thunderbird. It pulls emails from several accounts (including gmail), and lets me create sub-folders to put everything in.
Outside of a handful of rules, I don’t practice email hygeine, and currently have over 25k unread work emails not including the archive, but I don’t find this to be a huge issue (other than the fact that Outlook’s search sucks). Everything gets a glance as it arrives. If it’s unread after that, it’s by definition not important unless I’m searching for something specific.
I’d even go a step further and create new email account. It seems Jeff is thinking about it, and that seems like the more practical solution when an email account is suffering from digital overweight.