The 21 worst tech habits—and how to break them

Interesting read Donald. I'm guilty of some of that. My worst one though is in their bonus to fix bad email habits. I used to keep a nearly empty inbox now my gmail inbox has 4,982 messages...beyond ridiculous really...and my work email inbox has several hundred. I'm going to try to start fresh and keep them clean. Wish me luck.

Sounds like "hording" on the internet.

I also try mightily not to hoard emails, but every time I get them cleaned out, they start accumulating again!

12,598

I'm not even trying anything with gmail yet but I archived all my work messages prior to Monday and I'm going through them all to keep only the ones in my Inbox that need attention. This used to be automatic for me. It's disturbing that I have to really concentrate now. Well, here's to re-establishing good habits.

Oh my goodness oldbroad! That's a lot of emails!

12,598? My question would be, why!!

One of the, so called, bad habits was printing anything. I agree with not needing to print everything, but there are times it's helpful to print some things. The idea that nothing needs printed is rather rediculous.

I am brutal with email !! I purge every folder once a month

Purely because when I didn't, trying to find an old one amongst the zillions was so time consuming

Oddly enough Mad, that is one reason I got so lazy with gmail. The google search function of my email works so well I don't need to be so careful about filing away email where I know I can find it without a search. At work where I use Outlook, that is definitely not the case. I use the search function in Outlook when I have to but I don't like it.

I start to clean it out but never can get it finished and then they just start piling up in there again. A very lot of them are junk and not too hard to clear out but very many of them are ones I want to read and decide whether I want to keep them or not. That's where I get stuck. Too much to do when you work all week!

At work I have almost as many as at home and belive it or not, I refer back to a lot of them.

@homer6: I used to have the same point of view as you. I printed things for easier reading and to discuss with other people and I kept hand written notes and todo lists.

I have been forced to be paperless due to the fact that I work both in an office and at home. All my work is on my two laptops which I schlep back and forth to the office. I don't want to add a lot of paper to carry too and I must have access to all my notes and documents wherever I am. I lose some flexibility in how I take notes. My handwritten notes are much more useful with diagrams and other things that can't be typed into a text editor. It's a compromise for sure but it is working for me.