He “accidentally” deleted 51,000 emails:
“Okay, okay. I’m trying not to panic. I think I just tried something to delete anything unread and it just deleted them. And now, I’m like, ‘Oh no. I needed to read ‘em.’ I don’t know where they went. So, and now my battery’s dying. I think I got them all.” He also added, “If I owe you an email, you might want to follow up on that. Resubmit, perhaps, the email and then I’ll read it because it may have just gotten deleted. Yup, 51,000 messages are in the trash. Oh, f—k.”
Seemed genuine, but you never know with celebrities. And also meh, I can’t imagine email is a particularly important part of life and business for Chris Pratt (he’s got people for that, you’d think).
Apparently he’s going to un-trash them and try to get through 1,000 a day.
I admire the tenacity there. Almost like a goal to able to squat 20% more than your current max. You hit it hard every day and hope to get there.
There are two generic things I worry about here:
- Doing this purely out of guilt. I think people should do email because it’s awesome. Because it’s valuable. Because good things come from it. Because it helps you succeed. If you aren’t getting things like that out of email, screw it, delete those 51,000 emails.
- Actually getting through this work but not actually solving the core problems. The core problem here, by admission, is stuff like getting on too many email lists. If that’s the case, the solution is either the long hard work of unsubscribing from the billion things as you go (there are services for this, if you can trust them), or burning down this email address and starting a new one, salvaging the best messages as you go.