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My email diet
Merlin Mann | Sep 9 2004
I love using Gmail, but until it works with my über IMAP acount, I wouldn't seriously consider switching over. Still, Gmail's made me see the value of having very few actual folders for storing new and archived mail. It makes it much easier to track and organize your mail on the fly, plus Google's search and labeling tools let you confidently shunt items out of your inbox constantly without fear of having stuff disappear. So I decided to try a little experiment. I took all the messages I had in almost 50 nested IMAP directories (what can I say: I grew up on Eudora) and threw them into a single new "archive"? folder. So far, it’s working great. Here’s my flow:
It’s simple, super-fast, and keeps my inbox what it should be—a bare receptacle for holding unprocessed stuff. It also really simplifies the multiple mailbox selections needed to show threads correctly. Instead of having to grab all those nested folders, I just need to select three or four now. The two things that are not very Gmail-like about this, of course, are the search quality (come on, Spotlight!) and the missing neato labeling (I never thought I’d actually miss Entourage). So we’ll see how well this ages and scales over time, but so far it seems like a go. How do you process your mail? Any killer tips? 23 Comments
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I like the idea of...Submitted by Greg Schueler (not verified) on September 12, 2004 - 8:00am.
I like the idea of making Mail.app more gmail-like, since I have an IMAP account but Mail's interface is not as good as gmail. I found this Mail.app plugin which adds the "type-ahead find" feature to Mail, maybe that would be useful for you. < p> I also created an applescript to simulate the "archive this message" action of gmail. It can even be mapped to Control-y to give it a keyboard shortcut. < p> Name it "Archive Message___ctl-y.scpt" and put it inside your ~/Library/Scripts/Mail Scripts/ folder. < < p> I've found that Mail.app has trouble using IMAP sometimes. If I try to make a rule that puts a message into a different folder (e.g. for a mailing list), then Mail won't let me select any of the subfolders of my IMAP account. I finally created an applescript to do it, so if anyone is having problems of that sort I can post the applescript if you want. » POSTED IN:
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