Smart Folders

How to use a single Mail.app Archive (without losing your mind)

Merlin — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 07:36:29 -0400

For some time now, I've encouraged people to consider abandoning the byzantine folder structure that most of us used to employ to "organize" our email. In fact, this kind of functional simplicity is something I've started to think of as a pillar of Inbox Zero.

In addition to helping explode the myth that most email messages have any life once their actions have been liberated, it's a healthy habit to actively remove any unnecessary systematic fiddling that doesn't handsomely pay back the effort that habitually goes into it.

And, as ever: yes, some of you -- because of the incredibly unique nature of your work in an office -- will need to have 500 taxonomic mailboxes, a monthly archives by project, a person-by-person collection going back to 1983, and a multiply-copied CC'd team archives, coded by color and identified with helpful icons you found on Gopher in 1992. Sure, why not. If that's working for you, by all means, keep fiddling and filing.

But, if you're ready to admit you might be turning a crank that's potentially not hooked-up to anything, here's my four favorite ways to leverage the intelligence of Mail.app for drop-dead simple archiving.

[also, some prior art from April: Some handy Mail.app Smart Mailboxes]

1. Regular Old Search

An astonishing amount of email can be found with nothing more than a search on "From," "Subject," or the occasional "Entire Message." If you just need to see whether you've ever gotten email from a person, this is the easiest and fastest way. In fact, I can't think of a way to even do this with regular mailboxes, so score one for Search.

What you're not doing: Maintaining an insane collection of by-person manual mailboxes. I've heard of people who get a message that went to five people, then manually copy it to five folders -- one for each of the recipients. People like this need more work and, possibly a Ritalin. (See also below: Address Book Group Smart Mailboxes)

2. Smart Mailbox: Date Ranges

A Smart Mailbox for email you've received in the last 3 days will cover so much of your basic archive-retrieval needs -- meaning the times when you actually will need to see archived email (versus your elaborate fantasies about the day 10 years from now when you theoretically cover your ass and embarrass everyone you hate). Winnowing of this kind not only makes for faster scanning, but it will greatly speed up sorting and searching, of course.

My "Sent in the last 4 days" Smart Mailbox also gets a big workout, as well as "To Respond -- 2 days" which is any email I've received in the last 2 days and flagged for response.

What you're not doing: Building a rabbit hutch that requires you to manually drag crap into folders where the contents will die within a few days. A Smart Mailbox knows how to keep things fresh and avoids the need for unnecessary metawork and "thinking."

3. Smart Mailbox: Address Book Groups

It's mindblowing to me that even some power users don't know about this time-saver. You can create manual or Smart Groups in Address Book that are then exposed for Smart Mailboxes in Mail.app

Ideas for this?

clients on a project (Smart Group with shared Company name)
friends in your city (Smart Group with shared City or area codes)
colleagues at a remote office (Smart Group with shared Company name or email domain AND City/State)
Family (Smart Group with shared family surnames + names of in-laws, etc.)

Related: I'd also suggest making a new person-based Smart Mailbox any time you find yourself corresponding a lot with a new person, especially if it's on an urgent project that will likely sunset in the next little while. Work, work work, and then when your exchanges slow down, just delete the Mailbox and you're done. No need to re-re-re-organize.

What you're not doing: Again, you're not struggling and fussing over where stuff goes in order to keep access easy. You can trust that all your stuff is one single location, then just let Apple's magic do all your heavy lifting.

4. Smart Mailbox: Tagged Messages

With a plug-in like Mail Tags you can easily add simple taxonomic terms for the kind of messages that you used to file by hand. But, seriously: keep it as simple as you can possibly stand. Maybe even down to a few really basic categories for all non-actionable & reference email.

Orders & Receipts
Tracking Numbers
Accounts & Passwords
Yay Me: Compliments and Résumé-builders

What you're not doing: No longer fiddling with a hierarchical maze in order to know your login and purchase info can be pulled up when you eventually need it.

The Acceptable Exception: Really Old Mail

Depending on your life and work, you might want to consider archiving (as in removing to a backup someplace) any mail that's more than a couple years old. This should speed up your searches a bit, and will certainly improve the quality of any search-based results.

But if it's important to you to keep this around, maybe create an "Annual Archive" mailbox, with manual sub-folders for all mail received in each given year. I'm not sure how much this buys you from a semantic standpoint, but my suspicion is that it might be kinder on Mail's resources to not have a single, bajillion-item mailbox (any Apple pros want to chime in?).

As with all this stuff, YMMV. But consider whether the effort you put into filing pays off often enough to be worth the hassle. In my experience, it's no contest: smart wins.

So, anything I missed? Got a Smart Mailbox that saves your ass from fiddly archiving?

”How to use a single Mail.app Archive (without losing your mind)” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on August 16, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Some handy Mail.app Smart Mailboxes

Merlin — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 10:42:47 -0400

It took me a while, but ever since I've gotten my head around Smart Folders (and Smart Playlists and Smart Groups, etc.), I've started to think about the way I use my Mac a bit differently.

Clearly iTunes is the winner in this regard (watch for an upcoming multi-part series about Smart Playlists on The Merlin Show), but the Finder, and Address Book, and Mail.app also have an amazing amount of power rumbling under the hood. So, in the interest of spreading the love, here's four Mail.app Smart Mailboxes that have been rocking my world over the last months.

Inbox, Flagged

This super-basic mailbox is great for whenever you're processing your Inbox(es). You can blow through all the incoming messages, quickly flag anything that needs a response (CMD-SHIFT-L), then view this Smart Mailbox to visually separate the wheat from the chaff. Select all, move them to your "To Respond" folder, and off you go.

Recently Sent

Like the previous Smart Mailbox, this simpleton makes it easy to bubble-up messages that you often need to refer to, but that can be a pain to locate the old-fashioned way. Just shows you any messages you've sent to other people in the last couple days. Yeah, it's obvious, but, man, will you ever love this once you remember it's there.

[ also via Red Sweater Blog - Mail Smart Folders ]

From a given Address Book group

In Address Book:

In Mail.app:

A lot of folks don't realize that Smart Groups even exist in Address Book. Consequently, even fewer know that the contents of both ad hoc and Smart Groups can be searched on from inside Mail.app.

So in this example, I've created a Smart Group with everyone in my Address Book who lives in San Francisco, then I tell Mail.app to group all those peoples' emails in one place.

This is also swell for seeing messages from a company you work with a lot, and it's fantastic for grouping all the email from people in your family.

These particular kind of mailboxes can often be enhanced by ticking off the "Include messages from Sent" box -- that way you also see your own emails to people in this group, allowing you to view your conversations in threads. (Note that this is a lot less useful if your own Address Book entry matches the saved criteria :-) )

If you find yourself searching or -- God forbid -- manually hunting for certain kinds of messages again and again, try to think of a way that Mail.app Smart Mailboxes can do the heavy lifting for you. And, if you add to the mix something like Mail Tags (which adds several very useful search abilities), you can have a lot of automated sexy happening in your email.

Edit: 2007-04-23 11:56:23: Nomenclature corrected -- As Jean points out in comments, these are properly called "Smart Mailboxes" not "Smart Folders." Thanks, Jean!

”Some handy Mail.app Smart Mailboxes” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on April 23, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Vox Pop: Sell me on manual email filing

Merlin — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 08:25:42 -0500

tow.com » MsgFiler

Lots of the kids are excited about the arrival of MsgFiler, which is a neat litte app for helping you file away your messages in Mail.app:

MsgFiler is a plug-in for Apple Mail which quickly files emails into existing mailbox folders. MsgFiler’s fast searching means you just have to type a few characters to find the right mailbox. Move selected messages with a click or open a mailbox without having to navigate the mailbox folder pane. MsgFiler is optimized for keyboard-only usage, perfect for Apple Mail power users.

Zesty.

But I'll just play devil's advocate on this one: if you find yourself inordinately excited about the arrival of this (admittedly clever) application, there's an excellent chance that your email archiving system is unnecessarily complex and, in fact, is in need of a major streamlining. Discuss.

Me? Here's my own folder hierarchy (and the Mail Act-on key I use to send selected messages there.):

INBOX
To Respond (CTRL-R)
Archived (CTRL-A)
- Receipts and things I Bought (CTRL-B)
- Passwords and account info (CTRL-P)

That's it. Personally, I abandoned the byzantine filing system quite a while ago, and so far -- given a mindful combination of Smart Folders and Spotlight -- I've yet to find a compelling case for manually filing beyond a depth of more than one folder.

So, my larger question for you guys with more than, say, five or so archive sub-folders:

How often are you using your archiving hierarchy to retrieve old mail? In other words, give me your success stories and best practices by which the time spent on meticulous manual filing has paid outsize rewards in finding stuff later. Or, perhaps better put: what are the limitations of Smart Folders, and what would need to change about them to get you out of the manual filing routine?

Because, I gotta tell you, it kinda seems like a lot of busy work given what seems like modest functional pay-off. But you school me...

”Vox Pop: Sell me on manual email filing” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 17, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Revenge of the Smart Playlist: 5 tricks for packrats & power users

Merlin — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 10:56:21 -0500

The success of yesterday's post on the basics of Smart Playlists makes me think you might enjoy seeing a few more. So, today I want to show you how to get control of a very large iTunes library -- to save space by getting rid of stuff you're not enjoying or listening to, as well as bubble up stuff you may not even realize you like.

If you are an iTunes packrat but feel overwhelmed by your collection (or are simply running out of drive space), try these recipes for Smart Playlists to help you get it together.

Step 0: Backup

Before doing anything too fancy with your iTunes (or with anything else for that matter), always do a backup.

This could be as simple as dragging your library to an external drive, although personally I'd recommend a smarter tool -- I recommend rsync for geeks, and ChronoSync for civilians.

In any case, don't yell at me if you get confused and permanently delete your heirloom recordings. 'Nuff said.

Big and Useless

This is the dullest instrument in our drawer, but if you're on deadline for a video editing project and suddenly realize you have 200mb of disk space left -- well, you need to delete some shit fast.

This Smart Playlist, as you can see, looks for the biggest bang for the buck in terms of deletion. It's the fastest way to find very large files that you aren't listening to much. You could also use something like What Size for this, but, you know, that would be cheating.

Basic Culling

This one's not much more sophisticated, but, if you're doing regular backups, it's my favorite way to quickly and responsibly reduce the disk space used by your library. As with many of these lists, you'll start to see the value of rating your music; in addition to improving the quality of your lists and listening experience, it eventually becomes a quick way to determine which music you can afford to dump in a pinch.

Old Podcasts

Man, if you aren't careful, podcasts will eat your lunch. Although iTunes provides useful tools for managing the number of eps you keep, per podcast series, you'll be amazed how quickly old episodes will fill up your drive.

This little fella does something insanely simple but critical; it pulls up any podcasts that you've already listened to, making it easy to select them all and delete quickly (without lots of COMMAND- clicking in the "Podcasts" window)

Sure you really like that?

This simple auditor calls you on your ratings. It looks at your higher-rated songs and sees if you're skipping them often -- a good sign you don't like them as much as you claim. Very helpful way to refactor if you realize you've gotten too enthusiastic with the 5-star ratings.

Rate these

This does something like the opposite of the previous list -- it pulls up songs that you've listened to a lot but have never rated. Again, if you're going to get the most out of your Smart Playlists, it pays to rate stuff you have a strong opinion about. This is one of the fastest ways to do that.

You get the basic idea at this point. By tagging the crap out of your songs, adding correct genres, and rating rating rating, you can produce a library that is both more enjoyable and way more manageable. Even if you save every track you've ever added, you can always benefit from the history of your behavior that iTunes has collected and exposed.

”Revenge of the Smart Playlist: 5 tricks for packrats & power users” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 10, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Vox Populi: How are you using Mail Tags?

Merlin — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:26:58 -0400

I open the floor to all of you on a question of particular personal interest to me: How are you using Mail Tags?

While my uses of it to date have been helpful, I keep getting the feeling I'm not getting all that I can out of it -- especially since the ability to associate Projects, Priorities, etc. to a message could make for some really enticing Smart Folders.

I wonder if my question is ultimately more taxonomic in nature -- ultimately more about Spotlight in general or Tags in very very general: When tagging items on your Mac, what kind of '-onomy' are you using? How strictly do you enforce your vocabulary? What are the best practices for someone who's new to this?

Confidential to Mr. Thomas Vander Wal: if you turn up here and school me a bit on this, I’ll totally buy you a Coke. If you write a guest post on it, I’ll buy you a beefsteak and two cocktails. Seriously. Steak.

”Vox Populi: How are you using Mail Tags?” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 18, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Process email faster with Mail Act-On

Merlin — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 11:56:00 -0400

My usage of Mail Act-On, while far from novel, has revolutionized the speed with which I can blow through email processing.

If you've never seen it before, Mail Act-On is a very clever Mail.app plugin that lets you create key commands that execute Rules you've generated in your Preferences. Sounds pretty dull, right? Absolutely. Until you start putting this stuff into action and learn how painfully slow all that draggy mc drag drag business is. Here's how I've set mine up.

Step 0: Remap "`Caps Lock`"

First off: do yourself the biggest favor ever, and make that stupid "Caps Lock" key into something more useful. In the months since I first mentioned remapping this typewriter relic using third-party utilities, the folks behind OS X have been kind enough to bake it right into the Keyboard & Mouse PreferencePane ("[Apple] > System Preferences... > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard > Modifier Keys").

As your attorney, I advise you to immediately map "Caps Lock" to "Ctrl" since it's about to make your life a little better, thanks to Mail Act-On -- which relies heavily on the "Ctrl" key, as you'll see -- although you'll get way faster at many key commands as a result. Plus it doesn't bend your pinky up all weird.

Okay, with that nonsense out of the way, let's go make some rules.

(Important: If you've never set up Mail Act-On rules before, there's a few things you'll need to know, so be sure to first check out the FAQ).

To archive

This first one is really basic, although it's certainly the one I use most -- moving selected messages to my Archive folder.

That should be mostly self-explanatory, except remember that you can only add currently-visible mailbox sub-folders to a Mail.App rule. If you can't find the folder you want, cancel out and make sure it's first visible in your mailboxes and folders list over on the left (flip the little "reveal" triangle until you can see the folder you want).

Next up, it gets a bit more interesting.

To respond

This one is a workhorse; it takes the selected messages, flags them, and moves them into my Respond folder.

As I've said, I use a combination of flagging and mailbox location to create Smart Folders -- that way I can quickly glance, say, messages I've received 3-7 days ago that still need a response.

Handy way to catch up or just to make sure things don't fall between the cracks.

To respond...some time

The next one shows a really simple example of how you can make Mail Act-On work in concert with its muscle-bound big brother, Mail Tags.

In this case I'm adding a priority tag that -- again with Smart Folders -- gives me control over what kind of un-responded email I want to see. This rule gets a workout whenever I get mission-critical epistles like "Will you review my $500 Windows app?" and "You should totally link to photos of my kitty!"

Like most GTD-ers, I don't like to rely too heavily on prioritization as its own thing, but if I'm traveling or whenever things get really hectic for a few days, I need a fast way to separate the wheat from the chaff, and this helps a lot with that.

I'm really just scratching the surface on what you can do with Mail Act-On -- I'm sure there are power users out there who are doing much sexier stuff with it -- but I wanted to make sure people know that this is most definitely not just for geeks and high-volume email users. In my opinion, this is functionality that should (and eventually will) be included as a stock feature in Mail.app.

As I said in Inbox Zero, excellent processing is one of the ninja email moves. And for even the most casual user of Mail.app, Mail Act-On can make that road to ninjahood so much faster and less annoying.

”Process email faster with Mail Act-On” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 15, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Inbox Zero: Processing to zero

Merlin — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 13:20:02 -0500

This post is part of the Inbox Zero series.

The truth is that you probably can take the average email inbox -- even a relatively neglected one -- from full to zero in about 20 minutes. It mostly depends on how much you really want to be done with it. The dirty little secret, of course, is that you don't do it by responding to each of those emails but by ruthlessly processing them. Is that how you thought this worked? Answering 500 emails in 20 minutes? Jeez, it's no wonder you're such a mess. Your cognitive dissonance is epic.

Here's the deal: your email has been accumulating because you don't have the time to answer it properly, which is certainly reasonable and accurate. You also fear losing track of the email you haven't responded to -- that it will fall between the cracks. This fear is also reasonable and accurate. But you're just as keenly aware that with the backlog of email you have plus the increasing rate of incoming messages you receive each day, you can't possibly ever catch up. This, sadly, is also entirely reasonable and accurate. It's all reasonable and it's all accurate, but come on: something's gotta give.

Like Kirk's "solution" to the Kobayashi Maru Scenario, there's an easy but non-obvious way to win at this Catch-22: you cheat. You don't answer them all. Not even most of them.

You rewrite the rules. You adapt at a higher level. You have to, or else the Klingons will overwhelm you with their superior fire power and brute force -- and then your email would remain unanswered for eternity. Think how sad that would be.

The other day over on the board, we were talking about "triage" and how our meaning of it in personal productivity evolves out of battlefield (or emergency room) assessments of the best way -- at that given moment and considering myriad factors -- to do the most with limited resources and a theoretically unlimited demand for them:

I think the roots of the term are indeed in medicine, where patients are dealt with based on one of three (hence, "tri") statuses: those who can survive with immediate help, those who can wait, and those who won't make it no matter what.

The fascinating thing to me about the metaphor is that the status of one patient is almost always necessarily based on the status of the others, and new additions re-jigger the equation. Just like in to-do lists.

That's how I see it anyway. The more email you have been neglecting in your inbox, the more drastic and ruthless your processing must be. If you've got more than a few hundred messages in the backlog, I wouldn't even think about responding just yet (we'll agree to disagree in this instance, David Allen). Even applying GTD's "two minute rule" you might be looking at hours and hours of response time on top of your more-important culling, thinning, and deleting. Use your judgement about whatever best removes your blocks and gets you through the pile with your sanity intact.

Personally, I'd concentrate first on just processing based on a battlefield "biage" (is that even a word?). Delete the obvious spam, chain letters, and kitty photos. Archive the mailing lists and blog comments (sorting by subject is great for this), all the while identifying, flagging, and relocating all the actual important stuff to a "pending" folder -- that's the stuff that will take your real brain power and valuable time. Just get that sucker down to zero now. Fast. Go.

Only when you're at zero do you return to "pending," concentrating on short responses and generation of to-dos. Gang your work, stay in one mode, and if you start getting exhaustipated, just take a break and return by running dashes 3-5 times a day.

Understand: if you've really let things go, you ain't gonna hit bottom in any 20 minutes. But be patient, and keep your eyes on the prize. This is annoying, time-consuming, mentally draining work, but as you see that count dropping and dropping, you'll find unbelievable energy and resolve; you'll be deleting faster and realizing that all you keep is really valuable and worthy of your time. This feels so good that you'll never want to go back. But if you do, just get back on the horse. Process, process.

My Mail.app responding trick

This is something I use for getting through mail that's already been processed but needs a true response or external action. It'd be easy enough for you to adapt to your dusty inbox. Like most hacks, it's just a stupid mind game, but it totally works for me. Try it if you're stuck.

I've created four Smart Folders in Mail.app that provide a graded ramp to clearing out my disused "To Respond" folder. The names are my own. They have no actual effect on the trick, but they make me laugh, and sometimes, when I'm really behind, I need that sorely.

Peel Slowly & See
- Smart Folder Rules:
  - Date received is in the last 2 days
  - Message is flagged
  - Message is in Mailbox "To Respond"
- Usual load: 20 emails
- Time to completion: ~30 minutes
- Very recent email that I can feel like a hero for answering immediately. I start here as an emotional down payment, since they're also the messages I have the least guilt about -- and, consequently, the least resistance to reading and answering.
Recent and Saveable!
- Smart Folder Rules:
  - Date received is in the last 5 days
  - Message is flagged
  - Message is in Mailbox "To Respond"
- Usual load: 50 emails
- Time to completion: ~60 minutes
- Here's where I go next. Email that's only a few days old, so I don't completely suck yet. I can imply that I was trapped in a Turkish prison, appearing on a reality TV show, or even just try to play it off legit.
The Innocence Project
- Smart Folder Rules:
  - Date received is between 5 and 60 days
  - Message is flagged
  - Message is in Mailbox "To Respond"
- Usual load: 100 emails
- Time to completion: 2 hours - never
- This is where it gets really hard: the true Procrastination Zone. These people probably hate me, but you never know -- they might be delighted just to learn I'm still alive. Effort concentrated here yields outsize dividends.
Euthanasia
- Smart Folder Rules:
  - Date received is greater than 60 days
  - Message is flagged
  - Message is in Mailbox "To Respond"
- Usual load: 10-20 emails
- Time to completion: Usually? 1 second.
- That's right. I delete them. Does this make me a bad person? Only for a second. Then I'm right back in the "Recent" folders saving the ones I can -- hoping they never make it into the Euthanasia ward. The point is: this is where I draw the line in the sand -- it's the absolute last chance for a response. They either get it now or never. That's how you stay sane. Just move on.

Last tip

When you're ready to start processing your months and months of email, write this on an index card in big block letters, and put it on the wall behind your screen at eye level:

Think in shovels
not in teaspoons.

You'll never stay ahead of this stuff if you don't recalibrate starting today. Give each message as much attention as it needs and not one iota more. Remember the contextuality of triage: if you keep trying to care for dead and doomed patients, you'll end up losing a lot of the ones who could have actually used your help.

”Inbox Zero: Processing to zero” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 27, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Tiger's Spotlight: Smart Folders to monitor for large files

Merlin — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 09:11:50 -0400

As my media collection grows and my downloads get larger and more frequent, my poor PowerBook is almost always this close to being completely full. Having an overstuffed drive can hammer your performance as well as take you off-task (“You Startup Disk is almost full…”), so regular deletion of crufty files is a part of most folks' regular Mac maintenance.

Although OmniDiskSweeper is my favorite way to exhaustively comb a drive for fat-assed files, it can be time-consuming on a large drive. So I often do a surgical strike with a few simple Spotlight Smart Folders to identify the most likely candidates for fast deletion. A few very basic suggestions:

Movies
- Folder: Downloads
- Kind: Movies
MP3s
- Folder: Downloads
- Kind: Music
Disk Images
- Folder: Downloads
- Name: Ends with “.dmg”

I prefer these searches to simply sorting a folder by Size since the Smart Folders automatically ferret out nested, sub-folder files--no hassle, clicking, or re-shuffling.

Of course the applications of this are endless, but the basic idea stays the same: make it easy to monitor the locations where large files tend to accumulate. For example, you could also make a Smart Folder to watch your work files for large-item projects you can archive or delete:

Folder: Work
Size: Is greater than 20MB

Tiger has been out for several months now. Have you found novel ways to make Spotlight part of your workflow?

”Tiger's Spotlight: Smart Folders to monitor for large files” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 26, 2005. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

GTD-style email in Thunderbird

Merlin — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 10:40:59 -0400

entropic principal: Using Thunderbird to Get Things Done

Clever way to use Thunderbird’s excellent (semantic) flags to implement a GTD-inspired email triage system:

So I also have a saved search I call “Next Actions” to keep up with the stuff I need to pay attention to. The criteria for this one is: “Match any of the following: Label is Action Required; Label is None; Label is Wait”. See what that does? Anything I need to do something with, anything I’m waiting for somebody else to do, and anything that I haven’t made the first decision on, all shows up in one place. As soon as I mark something as Archive, Delete, or Defer, it disappears from this view on my next refresh. So my to-do list is always up-to-date, always right there. As soon as a task is complete, I can mark the message as Archive and forget about it.

I’d love for Mail.app to allow multiple semantic flags like this. You can get pretty close with Mail Tags or categories in Entourage, but it would be great to have this kind of functionality native to the app and easily exposable via Spotlight.

Technorati Tags: email, GTD, productivity, thunderbird

”GTD-style email in Thunderbird” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 01, 2005. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Ask MeFi on Macs and getting organized

Merlin — Fri, 20 May 2005 09:28:32 -0400

Getting Things Done on a Macintosh | Ask MetaFilter

Looks like a good thread in the green to watch and maybe contribute to.

Having recently finished Getting Things Done (and after following 43 Folders for some time), I’m inspired to organize my life. I’ve gathered supplies and plan to organize my physical life this weekend. My on-line life (based on a Mac) needs help, though. How do you stay organized on your Mac? Do you use iCal? (It still seems so buggy to me.) What e-mail program do you use? Is Microsoft’s Entourage all that? I know about Quicksilver, but can you recommend other little apps to keep my digital life organized and worry free? (Tips on physical GTD organization are welcome, too.)

”Ask MeFi on Macs and getting organized” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on May 20, 2005. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"