09:59! All inbox and bulk messages were processed in under 10 minutes! It is possible!

Total processing (including management tasks) only took just over 10 minutes. I’m very happy about that as well as I’m closer than ever to my ultimate goal of spending no more than 10 minutes per week on email.

Mostly though, I’m surprised by these numbers because I actually felt like I was moving very slowly today as I worked through the messages. The difference this time was that I didn’t care. I simply didn’t feel like stressing out over finishing as quickly as possible.

I also did not look at my message processing checklist, I just worked through messages as I saw fit. One thing I purposefully did at the start though was to mark the messages that I wanted to read first. I figured that getting them out of the way from the start would help me focus on the more technical processing tasks (e.g. updating filters, etc.). This did seem to help as I was not being sidetracked by messages the entire time.

I definitely had a lot of messages today (near the highest amount ever), but it was the fastest that I ever worked through them. Awesome!

Today’s Stats

• Checked email: 1 time
• Time: 07:05
• Total messages: 224
  • Inbox: 40
  • Bulk: 112
  • Important: 0
• Management: 12
  • Incorrect Smart Label: 7
  • Unsubscribe: 1
  • Update filtering: 2
  • Spam: 2
• Time per Message
  • Inbox: 05:26 (7.4 messages/minute)
  • Bulk: 04:33 (24.6 messages/minute)
  • Management (filters, etc.): 01:11
  • Total: 11:10
  • Average: 20.1 messages/minute