In the wake of the death of Osama bin Laden after being discovered in Abbottabad, Pakistan, I have been thinking back to the weeks I spent in Karachi and Lahore in 2004.

To this outsider and visitor, it seemed to me to be a country with a very wealthy class, a very poor class, and little in between. There were fancy shopping malls in Karachi and slums that lined the roads to the beach. There was a bomb blast while I was there, and I remember being surprised at how little it seemed to jar anyone but me. This seemed, to me at least, to be a place where the presence of extremists was accepted as an unfortunate reality.

While alcohol was illegal, it could be found, in private, if you knew the right people and where to go. I remember feeling nervous when pulling off the side of the road in a fancy car. My host, in his fine suit, approached a band of rural people who sold him several live fish, then killed and gutted them before us. But they were friendly and full of smiles. It seemed a delicate balance.
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At last count, my Gmail had 39,216 unread messages in it.  I am currently using 32% of my free allocated space.  And I have absolutely no plans to do anything about this.

Yesterday, on a car ride home from a wonderful Sunday outing, one of my former work colleagues was explaining his system for managing his email.  He insisted that everyone who works for him must also have a system to manage their email–that otherwise, nothing can get done. I could not disagree more.

My email “system” goes as follows: if the email is important, I read it. If it is trash or unimportant, I ignore it.

Deleting an email I don’t need to respond to takes time. Ignoring it costs nothing. Gmail has a rich, fast search capability. If I need to track something down, I can. The noise doesn’t matter.  Unsubscribing from lists I don’t care about (like Banana Republic’s mailing list they fire out weekly or more) is more time consuming than either ignoring the mails, or setting them to spam.

And I don’t worry about missing things, because I am constantly checking my iPhone for new messages.  Mobility has enabled me to avoid missing important missives. If I need to respond to an email but don’t want to do it right away, if it’s important enough, I will remember to do it, or I will put it on a To Do list. If it’s not important enough, I don’t need to reply. And if it IS important, and I do miss it, someone will call me. Or @me. Or otherwise track me down.

Time is my commodity. Managing my email is a waste of resources. Search, and forget.