

How To Win At Email - nikilster
http://www.nikilster.com/thoughts/how-to-win-at-email

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artursapek
The best thing I ever did in Gmail was filter the word "unsubscribe" to skip
the inbox and go into a "Newsletters" label. Whenever I peek in there I see
nothing but garbage, dozens of emails a day that I wouldn't have cared about.
Right now it's sitting at 5,162 unread emails. It keeps my inbox almost always
being things that are relevant or interesting.

I've shared this with a few friends who love it. It's pretty flawless. It's
never caused me to miss any important emails (that I'm aware of).

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dmbass
Why not just unsubscribe from all these useless newsletters?

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artursapek
Oh man. They come at a dime a dozen. I think my method is much more effective.

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brbcoding
The #1 thing that has helped me to keep emails organized is taking advantage
of the + notation that gmail allows... Every store or website I give my email
address to, I simply append (emailaddress+storename@gmail.com) to my email
address, which allows for easy filtering later. It also shows me who has been
giving out my email address :)

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icelancer
A significant amount of websites filter on the + and will throw an error as an
invalid character in the email string. Very annoying.

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e12e
Yes, it's very annoying.

I don't use gmail, but used to use <prefix><dash>username (prefix-username@)
with qmail - and at some point had to have email at a site that used Exim with
standard setup - that allowed <prefix><plus>username (prefix+user@) -- but not
with a dash (it is possible to configure Exim to do this - but with qmail it
is standard).

That's how I discovered that a lot of sites erroneously filter out + from the
username part.

Now host my own email with Exim - but rather than use a prefix, I've just set
up Exim to route all users at all subdomains to my inbox, so I can use
adresses like:

site@s.example.com (s for spam). So far I that have worked fine.

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btipling
I'll just put this here: <http://www.streak.com> It's pretty awesome at this
kind of email management stuff right inside gmail.

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jusben1369
I was/am a big fan and a power user. I think it's worth pointing out around
two weeks ago Streak automatically put a signature file into any Streak based
email without asking you to opt in. I thought suddenly dropping "Lovingly
managed by Streak" as a new signature file without permission showed poor
judgement or desperation.

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OmarIsmail
Co-founder of Streak here. Chalk that one up to poor judgement. We definitely
screwed up with that one and are really friggin sorry about that.

We gave settings to disable that when it launched, but that was obviously not
sufficient especially since it was on by default. After it started to roll out
and we got complaints pretty much instantly, we turned it off within a few
hours.

So ya, if this soured you permanent off of Streak then obviously that sucks
big time. We definitely learned our lesson though, so hopefully we get one
mulligan.

~~~
jusben1369
It was an interesting move and damaged my heretofore unabashed love. But all
startups get a free pass on one thing like this if they quickly recognize,
acknowledge and move on. Still using!

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unhammer
I follow a lot of software mailing lists. I used to use Gmail with labels for
them, but it still took a lot of time sifting through to the important stuff,
and subscribing/unsubscribing felt like a pain. Also, I would end up never
actually opening the stuff that skipped my inbox, filling up my account with
never-read emails from lists that I might as well unsubscribe from.

Then I switched to Gnus in Emacs, and for mailing lists at least it is a world
of difference. Scoring in Gnus ensures important emails are at the top,
unimportant are at the bottom, I can press "c" to mark all as read, almost all
frequently used functions require a single keypress, and subscribing to a new
mailing list also typically only requires a couple keypresses, and
unsubscribing is "ctrl+k".

Real world example: I want to follow any subjects in the high-volume
libreoffice-dev list that contain the word "proofreading". I do "^" and search
for "libreoffice", click enter to subscribe, enter to open the group and click
"I" to add an increase-score-rule ('subject contains string "proofreading").
Next time I open the group, all high-scoring threads will be at the top and I
can press "n" to go through them quickly, then "c" to mark the rest as read.
You can do this sort of thing with filters and IMAP flags ("stars") of course,
but they take so much more time to set up and change and yet only give one
level of priority (what if you want certain authors to be more prioritised
than others, when talking about proofreading?). If I ever tire of following
those subjects, I just ctrl+k on the group to remove it forever, I never have
to open an "unsubscribe" page – it's a single keypress, and it's offline.
Switching from gmail to gnus for mailing lists was for me like switching from
svn to git. Of course, you do need to be an Emacs user already, otherwise
you'll probably just be frustrated …

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Schwolop
The only problem I have with this approach (which I've been using for years
now) is that I'm too fast. My procrastination takes less than 15 minutes and
then I have to go back to working again!

When you've done this sort of thing for email, and it eventually becomes
second nature to apply the same level of filtering to Google Reader, then to
Twitter lists, then Facebook groups, etc - you end up blocking so much of the
noise that it's disheartening when you finally discover that actually the
signal isn't very interesting either.

 _sigh_ The organised person's first world problems, I guess...

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habosa
I recently got serious about Priority Inbox and it has really turned my GMail
experience around. After less than a week of being proactive about tagging
important vs. not-important emails GMail was able to pick up the trend and do
a perfect job of separation. I now have my phone and computer only notify me
of priority inbox and then I clear the regular inbox at the end of the day.
Reduced my active email volume by about half.

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corin_
> _The great part about this is that when you hit Inbox 0, you are DONE (yes
> thats amazing right?) with email._

Should perhaps add parentheses with "(but don't forget you're not really done,
you've just hidden anything that takes more than two minutes to respond to out
of view, make sure you deal with those emails later)".

~~~
nikilster
Yes, thank you. You still see them in your inbox view (due to multiple inbox)
so you are still aware of them.

~~~
corin_
My point (and I was being a bit snide, sorry) was not that you haven't been
clear enough - anyone who needs a picture to understand the end result hasn't
been paying attention while reading - but that I don't count it as "inbox
zero". It feels like cheating, like saying "here's how to completely clean all
of the rubbish out of your living room: dump it in the kitchen".

~~~
nikilster
Yeah I definitely don't have a perfect solution for this. Sometimes it piles
up. One thing that I have found effective is having a designated end of day
"clean up to-do list" time. Definitely open to hearing what you think would be
a good solution.

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beering
We have a saying, "If you're getting too many emails, then you're not good
enough at Gmail."

Especially with keyboard shortcuts, I can glance at the important emails,
check any others that catch my eye, and then archive/mark the rest. Priority
inbox, labels, etc. became almost automatic mental cues to check or delete
email.

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user2
The more complex the system, the harder it is to maintain. That's what happens
when people start to follow GTD.

~~~
user2
Speed is the key to email management. The Email Game (<http://emailga.me/>)
accomplishes this very well.

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treahauet
I like a lot about the information presented in this article. I've got the
accounts stuff figured out, and reasonably good filters setup. But the rest it
handled by mailboxapp.com on my iPhone. Gestures getting through my email is
such a win (Later? <-, Archive? ->, Trash? --->). I'm not nearly disciplined
enough to go through a "todo" filter. With Mailbox, I can say when I should
look at it again, and then I'm reminded about it.

Another thing I've done is the username+service@gmail.com trick. Easiest
account filtering possible.

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joshuaheard
This is very similar to the system in the book, "Getting Things Done", which
is what I use for Outlook. The salient point is to use your inbox only as a
temp bin for processing email. I create folders for all my projects and file
emails there. I also have 3 folders: "Action", "Waiting", and "Bills". Action
items are To-do items. Waiting is where I am waiting for a response, such as a
delivery confirmation email. Bills are email bills to be paid. After acting on
the email, it gets moved to the relevant project folder for archiving.

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gbog
"STOP. Right now."

I dislike this new trend which consist of SHOUTING at your reader and ordering
them to do or not do something (for their own good, obviously).

This is used to give some weight to very dull advices, like when you should or
~n't read your emails, which books to buy, etc. Strangely enough, genuinely
useful advices about important topics like how to educate your kids or how to
behave in foreign countries do not need to be SHOUTED at the readership.

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epaga
Seems relevant: I ended up writing my own little app to help me quickly
process my GMail emails on iPhone. Back when I wrote it there was no "Mailbox"
which is a similar concept. It really has helped a lot for staying on top of
my email: <http://app.net/emptyinbox>

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rollo_tommasi
I get maybe four or five e-mails a week and actively look forward to - no,
_ache for the experience of_ \- reading each of them. I can only imagine what
it must be like to live a life where I am so in demand that I literally cannot
process my inbox.

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joelhooks
Sanebox is an awesome service. It has reduced my email woes to almost nil.

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onster
Just turn on Gmail's Priority Inbox feature and be done with it.

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nikilster
I tried that but found that this worked much better for me personally. Also I
had emails in very different levels of "response required" - email lists
(don't need to look at vs response required immediately).

Also a big plus of this approach is feeling like you are "done" with email. I
know it seems a bit complicated but its actually quite simple - most of the
setup is a one time upfront cost of about 20 min. Try it out and let me know
what you think about this strategy!

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mandeepj
Why not use a free email sorting tool like this?

<http://www.emailtray.com/email-sorting-software.html>

It takes care of unnecessary email junk

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miguelrochefort
Looks similar to GTD.

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nikilster
I've heard good things about GTD but haven't read it. I'll check it out,
thanks!

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kfresh
sweet!!

~~~
nikilster
Thanks! Hope it's helpful :)

