Inbox Zero
I just spent an hour or so cleaning my email inbox after watching a video on the "Inbox Zero" approach. “Inbox Zero” is a philosophy of how to effectively processing all the mails you get each day.
The idea is very simple. Instead of just “checking” mails, you process them. This does not mean to respond to each and every mail, instead you apply one of the following actions:
- delete or archive
- delegate
- respond
- defer
- do
The approach isn't new to me. It is basically what Getting Things Done teaches as well. I tried to use it for a few times already. But somehow the system always starts to dilute and turns into an inbox mess again after some time.
I think one cause is that I often keep mails I know I will need to refer to in the next days in my inbox. Because search over IMAP sucks, I need to keep those mails at sight.
Today I was thinking if I should move all my mail to Google Mail instead. Having Google's search for my mails would solve that problem. Having a web interface to my mails would add some more benefit.
But I'm a bit reluctant to store my emails at Google only, so I'm thinking about setting up some synchronized IMAP mailbox at my server using imapsync. I have no idea if this works as I imagine, though.
I'd love to hear your opinion on all that stuff.
- What approaches have you tried to manage your emails?
- How successful were they?
- Do you use Google Mail?
- Are you using your own me@mydomain.com address or me@gmail.com?
- If you use your own address, how did you set that up?
- Do you have any backup strategy?
Thanks for your input.
2The inbox zero approach isn't completely new to me as well. I've been doing something like that for a while now. I've treated my inbox like a staging area. Means I've kept mails which I needed to response or which somehow were related to some things I had to do there and processed the remaining mails in bigger chunks multiple times a day, means deleting/archiving a.s.o.. But as you said already, this approach can get messy in times. In fact I am also looking for a different solution atm.
I am evaluating sup [1] since Sunday which has some neat features like google mail has. It manages it's own index and allows you to label/tag messages. This way I can tag mails as todo and look them up pretty fast when I need them. I have no idea how it scales though. It also lacks some documentation and I haven't managed to setup gpg with it yet. But up to now I quite like it.
[1] http://sup.rubyforget.org
I am evaluating sup [1] since Sunday which has some neat features like google mail has. It manages it's own index and allows you to label/tag messages. This way I can tag mails as todo and look them up pretty fast when I need them. I have no idea how it scales though. It also lacks some documentation and I haven't managed to setup gpg with it yet. But up to now I quite like it.
[1] http://sup.rubyforget.org
2008-06-11 22:41:13
31. I use Inbox Zero myself with my own email server
2. It works really great. I used to keep mails in my inbox as kind of a toDo list, but that sucked and just started piling up. Now I use rememberthemilk.com and Tasque as GTK app for it as TODO program so I can move mails away after having made them a TODO item.
3. I have a gmail account but don't use it: Never trust an Email server that you have no control over.
4. tante@the-gay-bar.com so, yes I use my domain ;)
5. IMAP server on a server a friend of mine owns (courier), locally I have my own IMAP server (dovecot).
6. rsync to a harddrive in the same computer and I have my email client "keep mails for offline use" so I have some backups.
2. It works really great. I used to keep mails in my inbox as kind of a toDo list, but that sucked and just started piling up. Now I use rememberthemilk.com and Tasque as GTK app for it as TODO program so I can move mails away after having made them a TODO item.
3. I have a gmail account but don't use it: Never trust an Email server that you have no control over.
4. tante@the-gay-bar.com so, yes I use my domain ;)
5. IMAP server on a server a friend of mine owns (courier), locally I have my own IMAP server (dovecot).
6. rsync to a harddrive in the same computer and I have my email client "keep mails for offline use" so I have some backups.
2008-06-11 22:43:52
4Four different mailboxes (work, private, company, free software) and never having more than twenty emails in a given inbox: process them daily. It works. :)
2008-06-12 08:46:07
5Andi, why does search over IMAP suck? Which mail client do you use? Couldn't you use one that stores copies of the IMAP mail locally and that has good search? If the local copies are in a common format (e.g. mbox), you could use some external tool to index and search them. Seems easier than setting up imapsync. (In any case, I would not depend on Google either.)
2008-06-12 09:01:30
Bruno
6Have you consider having some software help you out? Specifically, have you ever tried POPFile?
I have all my mail delivered to an IMAP folder my email client doesn't even see (sieve does this for me). That folder is checked by POPFile. New mails are categorized an moved to IMAP folders based on the classification. Thus, mailing lists and other stuff that might not be very important never ends up in my INBOX and thus I'm not forced to sort that stuff out. Another bonus is that you can use your client's new mail alert feature because you can be sure that only important mails will trigger that alert.
Another, but very similar approach is detailed here: http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/0 … eless.html
I have all my mail delivered to an IMAP folder my email client doesn't even see (sieve does this for me). That folder is checked by POPFile. New mails are categorized an moved to IMAP folders based on the classification. Thus, mailing lists and other stuff that might not be very important never ends up in my INBOX and thus I'm not forced to sort that stuff out. Another bonus is that you can use your client's new mail alert feature because you can be sure that only important mails will trigger that alert.
Another, but very similar approach is detailed here: http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/0 … eless.html
2008-06-12 09:11:14
7At work I let procmail sort my emails into folders according to categories (IDS, monitoring, logcheck, cronjobs, mailserver, fileserver, lists and so on).
I look at my Inbox as just another archive with things not related to any customer or server.
Every day starts with going through all folders in order of importance. Every email is processed (open ticket, delegate. ...) Usually I don't delete emails because a complete archive proved to be very useful (customer pretending lack of knowledge). Merlin's approach to archive everything in one single archive should be questioned, for example when you get emails from different customers. I want this separated.
Everything is in the company wide diff-backup.
For private emails I use gmail. I do not categorize my private emails. Since lighting (calender from Mozilla) is usable with google calendar I have all my private appointments in there too. Its even more useful since my wife uses it too ;-)
For my own domain I do it exactly as Tblue described it.
Frank
ps. I really should think about a backup of my gmail emails. Thanks for that hint to imapsync.
I look at my Inbox as just another archive with things not related to any customer or server.
Every day starts with going through all folders in order of importance. Every email is processed (open ticket, delegate. ...) Usually I don't delete emails because a complete archive proved to be very useful (customer pretending lack of knowledge). Merlin's approach to archive everything in one single archive should be questioned, for example when you get emails from different customers. I want this separated.
Everything is in the company wide diff-backup.
For private emails I use gmail. I do not categorize my private emails. Since lighting (calender from Mozilla) is usable with google calendar I have all my private appointments in there too. Its even more useful since my wife uses it too ;-)
For my own domain I do it exactly as Tblue described it.
Frank
ps. I really should think about a backup of my gmail emails. Thanks for that hint to imapsync.
2008-06-12 09:27:13
8I've just (2 month ago or so) set up my own mail system running postfix, dovecot and SquirrelMail on a virtual debian etch server. I never delete any mail, so I have an archive going back to 1996 (~ 2GB stored in Maildir format).
IMAP search does _not_ suck. Dovecot is even faster than a local search in Thunderbird. You should also try the fulltext search plugin:
http://wiki.dovecot.org/Plugins/FTS
IMAP search does _not_ suck. Dovecot is even faster than a local search in Thunderbird. You should also try the fulltext search plugin:
http://wiki.dovecot.org/Plugins/FTS
2008-06-12 15:35:36
Thomas Kindler
9I think the solution is to use a client that support imap with local copy. I use Kmail, and work perfectly. Once a year i backup and delete all my emails from the inbox. I record it in a cd encrypted with my gpg, and the thing is done. Oh, another thing: i only check my email from my laptop, due to is the only pc with my private gpg key.
--
by dklight - MontevideoLibre - Open Software, Open Nets, Open Minds
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by dklight - MontevideoLibre - Open Software, Open Nets, Open Minds
2008-06-12 21:44:15
10Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I think I will give Google Mail a try. The FTS plugin for dovecot looks very cool as well, I think I'll try that one at work. Oh and rememberthemilk is on my todo list, too (oh the irony).
2008-06-12 22:20:36
11I've been doing that for the last week, only because I've read something in the new Lifehacker book about managing e-mail in that way.
2008-06-12 23:58:46
12Additionally, yes I use Gmail and I also have some other e-mail addresses which all forward to Gmail and get sorted in their own labels/folders.
I don't quite use as many folders (for management purposes) as the five above though. I use "Saved" & "Pending".
I also use Google to handle mail for my two domains.
I don't quite use as many folders (for management purposes) as the five above though. I use "Saved" & "Pending".
I also use Google to handle mail for my two domains.
2008-06-13 00:04:19
13I do not use google-mail for privacy-reasons.
This movie sums it up pretty well:
http://masterplanthemovie.com/
This movie sums it up pretty well:
http://masterplanthemovie.com/
2008-06-13 07:37:53
14i know this might be shocking ... but until now i used my 3 @myDomain mail addresses via POP on a laptop ... this works for me ...
this said, i live in the inbox zero world since 1 week now, and already, i feel much more in control of my information ;)
good luck with your choices.
this said, i live in the inbox zero world since 1 week now, and already, i feel much more in control of my information ;)
good luck with your choices.
2008-06-13 19:57:49
Hi, I'm Andreas Gohr and splitbrain.org is my website.I'm a Web, Wiki and Open Source enthusiast living in Berlin, Germany. Enjoy your stay here.
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1. Sometimes I archive some important emails. I use my inbox as a temporary place for emails I've to deal with in the nearest time. I've no further special management system.
2. Yeah, it's ok, I don't get tons of emails each day. If I would I'd to think of some other systen.
3. Yes, I use Google Mail.
4. I'm using my domain address and plan to set up an IMAP server (thanks for your how-to, by the way :).
5. My postfix server redirects all mail to myname@mydomain.com to Google Mail and Google Mail sends email with this address as the sender.
6. I'm not doing more than described in 1.
Tbluw
(Sorry for my English - still learning :)