

Help - I'm drowning in Gmail - krav

I use Google apps.  Have so much work-related emails coming through (founder in startup) from so many sources, am drowning in keeping track, responding, creating to-dos.  Have a Mac.  Any suggestions, best-practices, or tools? Thanks.
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yan
I have a set of roughly two dozen labels, color coded for groups (i.e. mailing
list, financial mail, online services, etc) and a set of filters that
redirects all mail to their respective label, skipping the Inbox. I usually
filter based on the 'From' field. (Partial screen shot:
[http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/2189/screenshot20091003at62...](http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/2189/screenshot20091003at625.png))

Enable Gmail shortcuts, learn them and love to use them. Also, enable the 'gl'
shortcut in the Labs page again (gl = go label.). They will make your life a
lot easier, and I can't stress this enough. E.g., to go to label 'llvm-dev'
and mark everything read, I just type: "glvm-d" (it maches on substrings) and
then just "*uI" (select unread, mark read).

For to-dos, I use Gmail's Tasks feature (look for it in Labs settings).
Shortcut "gk" goes to it and I can quickly add a to-do.

The idea is, only personal email should ever reach your Inbox. And once it
does, I usually Archive it as soon as I'm done tending to it. I'm sure there
are more things that I don't consciously think about and are muscle memory by
now, but those features I find myself unable to live without.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Yes, I second making extensive use of labels and filters. It's hard to do
initially, because you feel like you're spending time without immediate
payoff, but it's wonderful to have your email sort itself.

Also, I was trying to wrangle my email a bit earlier this week, and discovered
that going from 50 message on the front list to 25, and eliminating the
multiple inboxes feature, really made my mailbox a lot less intimidating.

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Zev
I'm not much of a GTD person, at least not as far as all the core principles
go. I guess I follow them in some way, but I've never read any book or blog
post and went and restructured how I'm organized.

 _What I do:_

I personally use Things.app with a dozen or so various "Projects". Each
Project in Things is its own areas; a particular class I'm in or something
that I'm hacking on.

When something that I need to do for any of these Projects comes up, it goes
right into Things. If I'm in class, I'll add it to my iPod and then sync up
with my computer later that day. I add an artificial deadline to complete the
task, if there isn't a real deadline.

 _What my roommate does:_

My roommmate has another, simpler approach that I like: He just has a giant
pad hanging on his door and writes down what he needs to do on there. So he
sees it whenever he leaves his room as a reminder.

When he finishes something, it puts a giant X over the item. He doesn't have
dates written down, but tries to have everything he has written down finished
by the end whatever the time period is when he removed the page.

However, you're not me or my roommate. So, here's some other things to look
into: OmniFocus, TheHitList, Anxiety (<http://www.anxietyapp.com>), TaskPaper
(<http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper>) and a bunch of other very
nicely done apps whos name escapes me at the moment to look into, if you want
a program to help you manage things. And of course, theres always non-
electronic things (datebook, moleskine/generic notebook, post-its, etc) that
you could use if it helps you work.

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jlees
GTD principles and [http://lifehacker.com/5321180/turn-gmail-into-your-
ultimate-...](http://lifehacker.com/5321180/turn-gmail-into-your-ultimate-gtd-
inbox) saved my life.

Plus lots of sensible email filters, of course. (But that's something you
gotta figure out for yourself, sadly!)

~~~
chris11
I second the suggestions for using GTD. It really saved me from dealing with
school emails the previous year. Now spam isn't allowed, but before students
at my university used the email system for basically everything; like finding
rides, announcing club events, and selling things. I have over 4800 emails
sitting in my trash can going back from September 2007.

And one-touch handling really helped me deal with the flood of emails. After I
started doing it regularly, I was usually able to clear out my inbox whenever
I logged in. But it also helped that most of it was junk and I could
immediately trash.

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albertsun
The number one most useful piece of advice to dealing with email has been to
respond quickly.

So I read a lot of things on GTD but didn't end up adopting most of them. What
I did adopt was their rule that if you can respond to or deal with something
in less than X minutes (2? 3? forget the number) then do it immediately.

This made things so much more manageable and has kept my inbox size down
tremendously. Before I found that it had filled up with lots of emails that I
knew I should respond to or had to do something to follow up on, but just
hadn't yet.

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kakooljay
Check out The Web Startup Success Guide
[<http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430219858>]. There's a good section on
productivity tools & an interview with David Allen
[<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done>]...

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floozyspeak
I hear alot of people saying good things about Things on the mac, haven't
played with it in awhile. I use a crap load of filters in GMail to make my
life sane, but I too am running into the "how do we keep track of all this
stuff" when it comes to biz/app. Just started using Google Sites to at it wiki
style. Debating on something like Pivotal Tracker but I dont think we're that
organized yet. I hate introducing a tool/process/app that is more work than
what problem its trying to resolve.

Deep down, can't beat a good moleskin these days really.

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mackeeeavelli
Key: Ignore the inbox. Your labels define what is important. I have a label
!!!Priority, color red. I've trained myself to focus first on that label.
Everything else is secondary.

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bpourriahi
GTD is life changing. 1+ for that.

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rokhayakebe
Time to get some help. Hire someoone to work 5 hours per week for you. Set up
an email for them, and have them answer the low level emails for your company.

~~~
krav
Thought about that - but hard because when you're suddenly growing, all emails
seem high-level :)

~~~
CyberFonic
That's only an illusion. The more you grow, the more you should delegate and
free up your time for the high value issues - I mean that in real money terms.

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arnorhs
put all todo-related e-mails in a seperate todo list - don't keep it in e-mail
(whatever you use as a todo list) - and then archive that mail... and the
rest: deligate..

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adammichaelc
Are you a GTD guy?

~~~
krav
A recovering one.

