I do much as you’re doing now, but I split the archive folder up by years — this keeps performance from getting too ugly. Right now, for example, everything’s going into “2004 Archive”.

I never understood why I would need 50 zillion email folders once I had a decent way to search my email.

I wrote an e-mail management report a couple of years ago, detailing my system -

http://www.goodexperience.com/reports/e-mail/email-report-goodexperience.pdf

I’ve tried this, but I still find it useful to sort email by project so that I can see all of a project’s email at a glance. I have a relatively low email volume, and so all of my email goes into a project folder or an archive, or, if it needs to be dealt with in the next week, an ‘~ Action’ folder or a ‘~ Read + Review’ folder for longer messages. Works for me!

Hmmmm… Thunderbird lets you flag and label, but it ony allows 5 different labels. That’s probably a bit too macro to be super-useful…

For searching in Outlook I use a great, free tool called Lookout. It does a much better job of searching old mail than Outlook alone and it searches all of Outlook including the Contacts and Calendar. Get it here http://www.lookoutsoft.com/Lookout/

I ran across Mark’s e-mail method earlier this year and it’s served me well ever since. And with Mail.appetizer (http://www.bronsonbeta.com/mailappetizer/) on-screen notifications of incoming e-mail, I can quickly filter e-mail that I could get rid of in 5 minutes or less. As a side benefit, I’ve discovered that people tend to freak out (in a good way) if you respond to their e-mail in less than 5 minutes. Never underestimate the power of an empty inbox.

The best way to handle email is the old fashioned way (which I must admit I no longer do). In a unix shell all emails were separate text files in an in-box directory, this easily lends itself to small shell scripts to search, organize and otherwise manage email.

The rise of HTML email and GUI mail clients has pretty much made this impossible, though in time with filters, X, copernic and other search tools, we’re getting close to what we had before. At the end of the day though, I’d MUCH rather have my email exist in a human readable text format than some monolithic proprietary binary thing.

I use basically the same method, but it’s not working for me. The problem is the tiny detail of what you call your ‘@flag’ folder. With the volume of email I get, and the number of them that qualify as a To Do Item, I end up with a 200-email folder, with stuff at the bottom that gets consistently neglected. Well, I can’t have that! So I stop using that folder and leave the important To Do Items in my inbox, which currently stands at 768 items waiting for my attention, plus today’s new mail.

At some point, the principles of GTD can only be achieved with an assistant. I think I’ll outsource my inbox to Bangalor.

Man, I would really love to use Yahoo like this. They just bought Oddpost, so hopefully that will be a boost. Any advice on using Yahoo to utilize the principles of GTD? I just can’t pull myself away to another app. Am I therefore DOOMED!?

When I send something to archive I typically edit it for conciseness and add keywords and phrases to make it easier to find later.

A correspondent may not use the same terms I would choose, or they may abbreviate or otherwise leave out helpful information, so I add it myself.

When I originate a message that has lasting value (to me) I send a BCC to my archive. (Instead of relying on my Sent folder and letting it grow huge.)