Ok, I’ll start off by pointing out that it is far from being the first time I’ve done this, but hopefully it will be the last. I’ve cleaned up my email inbox (or rather inboxes, all 12 of them, but we’ll stick with the singular) and it has now been totally empty for a couple of days.
What comes in gets dealt with immediately, one way or another, and once that’s done it is either deleted or moved to the single Archive folder which has replaced the ridiculous arrangement of folders that previously existed. They’ve all been deleted as well, and the contents dumped into that same Archive folder. There’s no loss of information there at all, because I can search it. What happened in the past anyway, when I needed to find an old email, was that I’d look in the appropriate folder, and then have to do a global search in case I’d put it in the wrong place.
Another side effect is that my email apps are now CLOSED unless I’m actually processing emails. That means if you’re one of those people that make the ridiculous “have you read the email I’ve just sent you?” phone calls, I will no longer be lying when I say no. You don’t even need to make the call, because you’ll know when I’ve read it – you’ll have a reply. In the meantime, I’ll be working with one less distraction.
This time around, the move was inspired by a Google Tech Talk by someone I’m convinced is Chandler off of Friends*, but is now calling himself Merlin Mann. Whether or not he is a thinly disguised TV star, he talks a lot of sense. If you are in any way inefficient in dealing with email, take my advice and take his advice – the video is here.
Although excellent, this was actually the least interesting Google Tech Talk I’ve seen recently. I’m not a big fan of Google to be honest, but I can’t thank them enough for making this stuff available. Here are a couple of other gems I’ve enjoyed over the past couple of months:
*”He doesn’t look anything like him”, you are no doubt protesting. I don’t care, I get that from my long-suffering wife all the time in these situations. I say he does, and that’s that.
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The inboxes are still clear, but keeping the apps closed is not as straightforward as I initially thought, since sometimes I need to send an email, at which point a whole bunch of new incomings pop up, and sometimes I’ll leave it open anyway just for the pleasure of seeing things arrive and dealing with them immediately, which defeats the whole object. So…
1. Option – Check for new messages on startup – NO!
2. Option – Check for new messages every X minutes – NO!I’ve also beefed up the spam filtering on the server a bit, which has cut down the small proportion that was slipping through to an even smaller proportion.
Next mission – stop using those firefox tabs as an ongoing things-to-read list.
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