I get a lot of email. I used to think I got a lot of email, but that was before 10gen. Maybe one day I’ll remember writing this and laugh because comparatively today’s load is light. I hope not, because that thought is frankly scary.

There are a number of programs I’ve written to help me deal with email. One of them is less about helping me, and more about letting the people around me know that I don’t have a special desire to ignore them.

I used to respond very fast to incoming email… fast enough that I was a little notorious for it. That was back when I thought I got a lot of email. Then, I actually started getting a lot of email, and people started asking me more and more, “hey, did you get my email?”

I never like hearing that question. It puts me on the spot, and I feel bad. So, I decided to write an email aging report. It’s a very simple tool that shows unread email counts in my inbox by day. Then rather than ask if I read their email, they can get a sense for how behind I was. I’m pretty sure this doesn’t solve the deeper problem, but I get asked “hey, did you get my email?” less often, which makes me feel better.

Not everyone has this sort of issue to cope with, but plenty of people might still find it either useful or nifty to see this information on their inboxes, so I present to you my email aging report. The code is ripped out of a larger library that as I sanitize I’ll make more fully available.

{%img /images/email_aging_report.png %}