Hey folks,
I just watched the Inbox Zero video and have to admit that the most interesting bit came for me, right before it was done. People at Google are claiming to receive 600 mails a day??!

Whilst waving some friends off to sea earlier, I did some calculations. 600 messages in an 8 hour work day is 8 messages every 10 minutes. Or, 1.25 messages a minute.
In order to process an hours worth of mail (75 messages) to zero in ten minutes, every single message would need to be fully read and decided upon in 8 seconds. Decisions can be made quickly, but the average human reading speed is 150 - 300 wpm, or 2.5 - 5 words per second. Say you're speedy, and can do 4 wps. You're decisive too, and can make a judgement in a second, leaving 7 seconds to read each message. That still means that every single email needs to be 28 words or less. An average 5 line email (considered terse...) would come in at around 50 words - and you can bet that 5 line emails are not in the majority!

It's just not going to work is it?

I'm not knocking Merlins system here. I'm just stunned and amazed that ANYTHING gets done with this volume of noise flying around. I am very lucky, in that my job results in very very few mails. I can even go some days without receiving any work related mail at all. I simply cannot imagine the amount of stress 600 mails would bring me. I wouldn't be so much "scrolling-in-tears" as "walking-out-the-door"....

Please excuse this utterly geeky calculator hugging first post - I swear, I don't wear a pocket protector.....