On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 03:33:37PM +0200, Kai Grossjohann wrote: > Michelle, > > I think there is a misunderstanding. I wanted to understand how other > people process their email. You are giving me pointers to programs but > don't describe how you use them.
This is an interesting and universal problem in this day and age. Some months ago I rearranged my approach to my inbox, and I think it has helped me to the point where I am less behind than I used to be. I'm still seeking the holy grail of being "caught up," which sometimes seems like futile quest, but things are better. There are a bunch of resources out there, where people have expressed their thoughts and techniques about managing email. For example, this "inbox zero" series is pretty interesting: http://www.43folders.com/izero/ I think one has to try to understand the problem before trying to fix it. I started with a handful of realizations, including: - You can't read everything. Mail, even from mailing lists that you've signed up for and enjoy, shouldn't create a burden. - Old and as-yet-unhandled email often becomes less critical to deal with, not more, as time passes. I have a habit of deferring some of the more challenging mail until I have more time to think about it, but often that time never comes, and for each such message there rapidly comes a point where that time will never come. Once a message gets very old (and "very" doesn't have to be too long) one should probably move on to newer things. Old piled-up messages frustrate me by increasing my email load, and most of that is really imaginary. - You can not time-shift your way to efficiency. The more things you time-shift to the future, the less time you have to deal with them. Just look at your tivo or netflix queue :). - I'm on a lot of mailing lists. Not every mailing list needs my complete attention, and not every thread needs my comment. - A cluttered primary inbox wastes time, especially if you are looking at many of the same messages every time you go into it. I try very hard to keep my inbox under a screenful, so that I can see everything that's in it without scrolling around and wasting time and attention. I hate losing something important because it gets lost in the inbox. My strategy is: - Keep the inbox small. - I have a subdirectory (aka a folder collection, but we're all shell users here, no?) called 'M/' which contains most of the mail that gets autofiled using filter rules. (I created a nice control file that describes to my delivery agent how things are filed into the 'M/' folders, but that's another tangent.) Various work-related mail goes into folders there; high-volume mailing-list mail goes there. Lower-volume mailing-list mail that I read immediately (like mutt-users!) still goes directly to my inbox. Periodically I check the 'M' folders in various ways; e.g. sometimes I want to check recently-arrived mail, and other times I simply want to work in a particular folder. - I have an "action" subdirectory "A/" into which I triage messages from my inbox. Old messages that might have a long life get filed into A/long (this keeps me from scrolling in my inbox to see old non-critical messages I haven't dealt with yet); if they stay there long enough, I delete them or can easily ignore them. Interesting material or references to material that I think I might want to read later goes into A/read -- similarly, if they get old enough, I either delete them or simply don't care about them. Stuff that I want to respond to immediately goes into A/answer, and I make sure I clear this promptly. Stuff I need to do goes into A/do and I look at this as time permits. So far this is working well. The hardest part is remembering to stick with it. -mm- (now I've added to your email burden)
