I agree with what Marc said, my email definately shows how quick I respond to things in my life. I usually respond within a few hours of getting an email. I think that email does reflect alot of the lifestyles that people have.

[…] Merlin asks ‘what does your inbox say about you?’ - My inbox says I’m a mess […]

[…] What does your inbox say about you? […]

Mine says I am obsessive (keep everything) and that I change identities and disappear, leaving my whole identity behind every few weeks (dumping everything into the ‘e-mail DMZ’).

My inbox doesn’t say anything about me … at least not anymore. When I caught it talking about me to other people those two times, I got mad at it and gave it a good slapping. Now it receives an electric shock if it talks about me.

You only talk to ME, Inbox!

[…] via 43 FOLDERS EMail This Post to a Friend […]

One thing I’ve noticed quite a bit is that people who write abrupt, almost curt emails often end up being the most chatty, gregarious people in person. In other words, I don’t think it’s the tidiness of one’s inbox that’s telling: it’s the content of the sent box.

If anything is an indication of personality w/r/t email it’s that people who write horrendously misspelled missives chock-a-block full of grammatical errors tend to be similarly dishevelled in person.

Then again, I’m probably talking out of my hat in a big way here. Empirical evidence? Nah.

I think how you organize your inbox, and on a larger scale, how you organize your computer files, is a reflection of your internal information organization. This would be an important component affecting how one behaves in the real world. But not the only factor. The style/content of messages probably is more an accurate reflection of my mental state at the moment.

Also, I have to believe that one can change something fundamental as how we organize our lives internally. At least, I hope I am “evolving”. Just as GTD has allowed to me relax somewhat about things I need to do, improving desktop search programs have decreased my need to meticulously categorize every file.

There are inboxes and then there are inboxes…

I’m the ultimate Email “hoarder” — I’ve kept every non-spam email I’ve gotten since 1995. Really. This is necessary when working in an ill-defined academic environment, where an Email may be necessary for reference later (or for the nonstop infighting that goes on — this has saved my career on more than one occasion).

Does this mean that I read or use everything in my “in” box? Of course not — I have a separate “action” box that I transfer the really important stuff to (perhaps one or two items a day, finally). This is sorted by date — if it’s there for more than a week, then it’s expedited or renegotiated (“Can I have an extension on this?”). This allows me to have a clear view of what’s immediately important versus the endless dribble of informational Emails that come in.

Good articles. Not sure, how people can know more about me from my email address

Personally, i’m an email horder. I’ve got emails streching back to 2002 in my inbox and I like to have them accessible. Junk gets binned right away and I know soon as I look at my Inbox that they’re good to read. In real life i’m messy and unmotivated but my email accounts are always clean and tidy.

My father on the other hand deletes any emails he has actioned, only keeping customer emails for reference. My dad is a clean freak and this reflects in his email handling.

This idea seems to be a tad hit-n-miss, but it can give you a slight insight into the person behind the inbox.

At a basic level: I think you can tell a great deal of someone via email correspondence, from (like you touched on) spelling and grammar usage, all the way to sense of urgency via response times.

Perhaps trivial, but coupled with additional contact with said emailer, you could glean at least some information from email style.

I’m not sure if a person’s inbox really tells a lot about the person other than general things. I am a hoarder in terms of keeping those messages that I feel will be useful later on. It helps in my job due to the number of times that you need to refer back to something you sent out months ago. Throwing it out and erasing the trail would be horrific at times You would also see a lot of spam coming in, however that is because I’ve configured my Outlook to be used remotely, disabling the spam filter. There are still times when phone conversations are better than an e-mail, and I will generally answer the message with a phone call than a note back at first simply to measure the importance of the request.

IMHO, it doesn’t matter at all whether your e-mail style is consistent with who you are — it matters that other people THINK your e-mail style is consistent with who you are. Your e-mails are saying things about you, whether you believe it or not, and whether they’re true or not.

I don’t know about what e-mail boxes say but I do know that this comment section says that Leo needs his own blog.

Leo, darling, your comment made me laugh so hard that I doubt anyone else is going to be borrowing my chair anytime soon!

[…] Merlin asks ‘what does your inbox say about you?’ - My inbox says I’m a mess If you enjoyed this post Subscribe to the Free ProBlogger Newsletter […]

[…] What does your inbox say about you (or your desktop for that matter)? […]

I’m doomed. My mailbox is a mess.

I have different email accounts attached to various online projects (at least one for every website I’ve started) and they all dump into my Thunderbird inbox. I aggressively weed out garbage, but don’t tend to process the relevant emails promptly and dispense with the messages. Months and years later I’ll scroll through the old stuff and try and remember why I didn’t delete some newsletter - what was so important?

My desk isn’t much better.

The glimmer of hope is that I can tear through the really old stuff and make fast choices about what to keep. So, maybe it is just a timing issue and not a deep psychological problem.