ryanwold.net - Civic Tech, Bitcoin, and Open Government Innovation

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I use at least 2 email accounts, one for work, one for personal.
For each account, I use [Gmail Superstars](/entries/gmail-superstars-with-gmailgem).

At times, I think about how email affects me. Inbox zero is desirable. And attainable. But, how often do I get to inbox zero? Let's find out.

The gmail .gem gives me the ability to count emails in Gmail and to leverage custom search, so I can search for my Superstarred items.

With a cron job, every hour, I emit 4 counts from each of my email accounts to a `TimeSeries` table.  With a `key`, `value`, and `created_at` time, I now have data objects that represent this count, over time. Now, to visualize it.

I've used D3 in the past, but recently, I used Vis.js for a timeline and had good success, so I decided to use it again.

### The chart

![Email Activity over Time](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1186808/afomi/email-time-series/email-time-series.png)

### The story

The chart above depicts my email count (and substates for my email, like items to respond to, or things I am awaiting a response on).  The chart shows the day before New Year's, I deleted a bunch of email.

![](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1186808/afomi/email-time-series/new-years-cleanup.png)

Before going back to work after the New Year, I have time to do my weekly GTD Processing; processing a bunch of emails.

![](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1186808/afomi/email-time-series/gtd-processing.png)

During the work-week, my personal email accumulates.

![](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1186808/afomi/email-time-series/unread-email-accumulates.png)

I'm curious to see what this pattern reveals in more time.

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