Email Overload

When I got into work this morning, I had 1280 (oh wait, make that 1282!) unread messages sitting in my inbox. Thankfully, 99% of them were due to a crashing process on a test machine from a topology that went awry. Unfortunately, every one of them had a different timestamp in the subject line so I couldn't just group by subject and bulk delete. That also means my test machines need to be dumped and rebuilt before I can get back to debugging my test code.

Then a new email pops up in my personal inbox after I'd just cleaned it out, and even though I know chances are it's spam or one of several news alerts I subscribe too, I still get excited that perhaps it'll be something interesting. Turns out it was an email telling me I posted a comment on my own blog. Ah well.

After a few months at Microsoft, I've had to turn off all Outlook email notifications; I find it impossible to concentrate on my code when there's a little icon down there reminding me that something is sitting in my inbox just waiting to be opened. In case anyone else has been losing the battle with the email checking urge, you can turn off these notifications under Tools -> Options -> Prefrences tab -> Email options -> Advanced Email Options -> When New Emails Arrive.