

Take control of your email and achieve inbox zero - limedaring
http://www.limedaring.com/take-control-of-your-email-and-achieve-inbox-zero/

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shazow
The multiple-inbox + starring trick is really key. Every morning I'll dive
into my emails starting with the oldest and archive+next using the ] shortcut
while starring any emails I have to act on later. Once I've gone through all
my Inbox emails, I work through the starred emails.

Your inbox should be like the lobby of the emergency room—that's where you do
your triage.

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Natsu
Exactly. My inbox has only emails I wasn't expecting to get. Everything, and I
do mean everything, else gets filtered into an appropriate category. So
family, friends, mailing lists, etc. are all tagged appropriately and not a
one of them makes it into my inbox proper. Boring parts of mailing lists and
whatnot get marked as read and I sort through the others as I have time.

At this point, very little goes into my inbox to begin with, and most of what
does is important.

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hugh3
I tend to get about fifteen emails a day, and only two or three actually
demand any kind of response, so these sorts of articles make me wonder whether
I should feel grateful or lonely.

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snprbob86
Inbox Zero has become super easy for me since I started using
<http://www.boomeranggmail.com/>

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mtgentry
<http://sanebox.com> is helpful too if you don't want to configure all those
folders in gmail.

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limedaring
Taking a few minutes to configure folders is better than paying $60/yr, IMHO.
:)

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nradov
The fundamental assumption here is that having an empty inbox is a desirable
goal. Why? Is it just the satisfaction of seeing an empty screen? I don't get
it, seems basically pointless. Is there any real evidence that achieving that
goal would improve my productivity or make me more successful?

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limedaring
If you correlate your inbox with "things to do/read/act on", then of course,
an empty inbox is a desirable goal. I certainly get too many emails and it's
too important to me to respond to everyone that emails me. If they were mixed
up in a messy inbox, I might miss an important message.

~~~
nradov
How many is too many? Why is it important to respond to everyone? This seems
like "cargo cult" style productivity, spending a lot of time on activities
that look like work but don't actually generate much value.

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limedaring
People take the time to email me directly. Even if it isn't something worth my
time ("Hey I see you're doing a startup! How about you quit that and join
mine?"), I'm still going to respond with "No." Or a canned response.

Consider it a personal philosophy — if someone takes the time to email me, I'm
going to respond. It might not seem to give much value, but it actually makes
me and my personal brand look better. Do you want to appear like a douche by
not even deigning to respond?

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bravura
I would like a single click shortcut to filtering message like these out of my
inbox. How does one make “Filter messages like these” faster?

Archive+next using the ] shortcut is a very fast way to plow through one
message. Maybe 100 ms. Because it takes only a single keystroke.

But "Filter messages like these" takes several clicks and at least 10 seconds
(maybe more) for intermediate pages to load. The filter is usually correct.
How can I do that?

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flocial
I use imapfilter for date-based expiration. Most of the cruft that accumulates
in my inbox are straightforward notifications that don't really warrant manual
refiling. Imapfilter is amazingly versatile and configs are portable. Sparrow
and iPhone for scanning and Wanderlust/Emacs for more heavy duty reading and
response. Mu for indexing and searching GBs of email.

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count
I have two folders - 'archive' and 'inbox'. Once 'inbox' gets to be a large
number (3-4k usually), I'll just move everything into 'archive', if only to
make searching on the iphone a little faster. Otherwise, why organize when you
can search?

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sc68cal
Filtering is the key step in organizing your mailbox. I subscribe to LKML,
FreeBSD-Current, Full-Disclosure, among others and would have drowned under
the deluge without procmail.

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Shenglong
This was one of the most helpful articles I've read. I don't have anything
constructive to say - but thanks!

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paulnelligan
I'm a firm believer in the label + archive technique ... works really well for
me!

