How I deleted 100,000 emails

Coincidentally I watched the sci-fi flick Johnny Mnemonic yesterday. If you manage to look past the wooden acting and straight-to-video charme, is has an interesting premise. In a nutshell, the plot takes place in 2021, where corporations have taken over and are in control of the whole information flow. Half of the earth's population is suffering from Nerve Attenuation Syndrome, a fictional, epilepsy-like disease, which is a result of overexposure to the radiation of technical devices. Johnny Mnemonic is a data courier, who has an implant which allows him to store any data in his brain and smuggle it for well-paying customers. In order to fulfil a contract he overloads his brain severely and desperately tries to get rid of the information he is carrying.

For me, it rang a bell. The volume of data we are dealing with seems to increase all the time. Getting information is trivial today, the challenge is filtering. The tools and user interfaces have a hard time living up to that challenge. Our default tool, the brain, is quite well-designed as it automatically discards useless information, we forget details, and only store what left the biggest impressions on us. Well, most brains manage, unless you happen to suffer from Hyperthymesia. People with this condition are unable to filter between more or less important pieces of information. I guess my mail client has Hyperthymesia too.

I'm not even talking about spam here. Spam is filtered quite well, although it is still annoying to some degree. I'm only talking about information I get from my peers, mailing lists and company mass mails. I have to make a conscious effort to arrange the incoming data. I created a sophisticated folder structure along with a set of filters. But I still have all the data. I have to make a decision everytime I want to delete a mail. Making decisions causes stress. What would it be like if you had to consciously delete a thought, a visual impression or a sound? Think about it.

There's not a lot I could do about the mail issue. First of all, I deleted 100,000 mails in a frenzy. I cancelled a lot of mailing lists, and only kept those I contribute to. Mozilla Thunderbird has a feature "delete messages more than n days old", which is interesting, but I'm afraid to use it. That sounds too much like Alzheimer to me. My only advice is to check mails a few times a day, in the morning, before and after lunch, and before leaving the office. I keep the mail client closed in between. I keep my inbox clean. There's nothing more satisfying than going home and leaving an empty inbox behind.

I prefer using forums over mailing lists. In a forum, you search for the information you want. You will get notified if people write about topics you have shown interest in. In a mailing list, you always get all the information (digests don't help). It's like having this pathetic friend that cannot stop talking, until your ears bleed.

If you have advice for me, if you know any great tools that would help me, let me know. I don't want to end up like Johnny Mnemonic. Only twelve years until 2021.