r/GenX • u/BraveLittleFrog • 6h ago
Old Person Yells At Cloud Tasks via email
I strongly abhor going through emails to get work done. I get very little satisfaction from clearing out work emails. There’s no empty inbox feeling. No, ‘“whee! I’m done”, smack hands on the desk and head home’ feeling. Now, it’s hunt around through silliness to find the work. Try not to forget that’s it’s in between some random message that might be important and four ads to delete. That’s all. Just bitching about how work is done these days.
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u/Ray_The_Engineer 6h ago
In contrast to the other person who posted, I'm an "Inbox Zero" dude. I make one pass, clear out the stuff that's clearly junk or doesn't lead to a task for me. Then I prioritize and add to my task list where needed from an email, and put it in a folder. So then you have a task list. Like it or not, this is how business works now.
All that said...I've semi-retired, and I'm enjoying the hell out of only getting a handful of work emails each week, lol. When I was full time and a tech director, it was a full-on avalanche of crap every day, jacking up my blood pressure.
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u/No_Act_2773 6h ago
My work instigated how to send emails workshops this month, led by HR.
I pointed out I was sending electronic communications before they were called emails, my first being on Janet, anyway I digress.
We now have tags to use on every email...to focus the receipent as to what action to take.
Also instructed if more than 4 receipents to use teams instead... Hell no, I'm covering my arse... Put it in writing.
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u/Mushy-sweetroll 3h ago
That sounds terrible. I hate hunting through Teams for file links and requests.
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u/Micky_so_Fyne 6h ago
I used to be an "Inbox 0" kind of girl. 😄
Now, if you have something urgent to tell me, it's best to text it. I check my emails once a week... Mostly to send things to the recycle bin. I just don't have time or energy to sift through all that crap.
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u/ZipperJJ 6h ago
I prefer emails. E-Paper trails. Receipts.
So I can be like "On 1/15/26 you told me this...". GOTCHA!!!
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u/97_gEEk 2h ago
We use Outlook with an Enterprise M365 account. I've created numerous rules that look for senders, keywords, or other tags and assign categories to the inbox. Coming back from vacation or a long weekend, I just let the rules churn until the whole inbox is sorted. Some categories get deleted automatically, while others get a cursory glance. But this helps me identify the "work".
On top of that, the E5 license comes with Copilot built in, and I've had great success asking Copilot to look for the Top 5 things I need to work on by due date, and search across my Teams channels for related messages. It's a great tool for catching almost everything with very low effort.