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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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This must be in the...Submitted by John Faughnan (not verified) on September 12, 2004 - 3:48pm.
This must be in the air. I started using Lookout a few months ago. Once I had confidence in it I made my Outlook folders into "categories". (Every item in a folder was assigned a Category that mached the folder name -- that way what I did next was potentially reversible). I then dumped all my email into two folders: save and save_older. I did that it that way because Outlook's Find command works well with a few hundred messages, and I keep "save" at that level. Periodically I cull "Save" by dumping messags into Save_older. I have archive folders for tasks & notes. Contacts never get archived. This saves me a ton of time on filing, and Lookout has made retrieval a dream. » POSTED IN:
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