INBOX d/dt

So I’ve been looking at my inbox. I felt like I’ve been getting more email than usual so I’ve put that theory to the test:

I’ve been collecting my INBOX size every hour for the past year, which makes it easier.

Data as CSV [CC-BY]

First a basic graph of time vs INBOX size is a start… you can see the peak where I went to the sea-side and didn’t answer my email!

But to work out how loaded I am, a differencial is more useful: Hourly change in INBOX which is unreadable, so lets add a 168 hour (one week) rolling average: Hourly change in INBOX, Weekly rolling average.

Nearly there, but it’s only increases that I’m interested in so lets make a Hourly increases in INBOX, weekly rolling average.

So I can clearly see from this that my email inbox increases remain at an average of 2-3 per hour. Obviously any hour where I answer email will be ignored, so it’s imperfect, and I get far more email in week days so the actual number is probably higher,  but it shows that the steady rate isn’t unsually high right now.

As a final note; the level of decreases is a very different to that of increases: Hourly decreases in INBOX, weekly rolling average, which you’d expect as it’s when I’ve been clearing more/less email.

OK… I should probably get back to my INBOX.