Email, The Internet's Backyard

Josh Withers’ blog – Stand back, imma fix email

I look at my mate Ash’s iPhone screen and see the red badge on his email app and it terrifies me. What’s the current unread count, Ash? The thing is, most people don’t love their inbox because it’s their internet yard … and most people don’t like looking after their own backyard.

They like going to restaurants where waiters bring the food and take away dirty dishes. We like going to public parks where the council mows the lawn. We love theme parks where the employees maintain the rides. In this analogy, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Apple News, LinkedIn, Snapchat, TikTok, are the third parties.

It turns out our homes & our yards are pretty cool, we just need to invest into them, maintain them, clean them, and if we do, we might enjoy living in them, and we can do whatever we like there because it’s our backyard.

Email is the backyard of the internet. Your inbox is yours, you own it, and most of us leave it to rot because it’s not on public display and most people won’t see it.

Some great recommendations, several of which I’ve implemented myself over the last few years. I highly recommend learning how to filter emails to reveal specific ones — one of the reasons I think most folks don’t tackle their email is that they feel overwhelmed. Ideally, you want to only be subscribed to those emails that are either important or useful, only archive what you need to keep, and delete everything else.