What’s the Main Cause of Your Overstuffed Inbox?

Blogger Dan Markovitz says that emptying your inbox isn’t the solution to email overload—that figuring out the source of all those messages is. He writes:

If you really want to reduce the time you spend in email and increase the amount of time you spend on the stuff that’s really important to you and your organisation, you have to understand what’s coming at you. And why.

Markovitz argues that we should be asking ourselves where the bulk of our email comes from, how much of it is worthless, and what topics come up over and over again, and who sends you the least relevant messages—an interesting exercise for anyone suffering from an overloaded inbox. What’s the source of most of your email on a day-to-day basis? Is it cc-happy co-workers? A chatty mailing list? Bacn? Fwd-prone pals? Let us know in the comments. Thanks, Ian!