I recently discovered something fascinating about my father-in-law David: he has six email inboxes.
He’s been retired for a few years now so wasn’t sure why he would need six. But he has a lot of hobbies. And he likes to keep the email relating to these hobbies completely segregated. So he has: one email account for family correspondence, one for online shopping, one for bird watching, one for the allotment, one for golf and one for photography.
Personally I’m a Gmail devotee, corralling my different email addresses (personal, online shopping, blog & business) into one Gmail inbox so I only have to check one place. It’s obsessively organised with filters, labels and aliases. So I found his One Account Per Subject approach baffling but totally charming. Not to mention admiring his ability to remember six different passwords!
I asked him about the logic of the system and he said, “Some days I only want to think about golf so I just check the golf account. Other days I’ll catch up on my bird watching newsletters and don’t want to bother with other things.”
I can imagine some days he can’t be fussed dealing with pesky son or daughter-in-law emails so he’ll log on to photography instead. Hehehe.
The thing I love about my father-in-law is that he never stops being curious about the world and when he gets into a new hobby, he really gets into it. So I wonder how many email addresses he will end up with?
Anyone else out there take this approach to inbox management?