State of the inbox
Nov. 30th, 2012 12:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackIn the ongoing quest to not waste any time sifting through mountains of unsorted email, what's the current status of my inbox?
Inbox
Status: Zero messages.
This is always at zero messages except when I'm away from the computer for a week. When I read a message it's immediately archived/deleted, moved to "reply", or replied to (if it just needs an acknowledgement).
Subfolders of inbox
Status: Zero messages.
Separate folders for social mailing lists, commercial mailing lists, social networking notifications, "it's your turn" notifications, etc. These are automatically filtered so all the predictable high-volume stuff (some very useful, some very useless) doesn't clog up the inbox. In fact, the inbox now usually only gets:
(i) Actual important messages, like human-written emails addressed directly to me
(ii) Everything else, random verbiage from websites I've had to sign up at, etc.
Spam
Status: Lots.
Gmail filters out spam. I really should check this more often, but I never get round to it. It gets automatically deleted after a month. Of "real" spam (basically, "stuff you can't subscribe from", not "stuff where you didn't really want the mailing list when you bought that but it's from a legitimate company"), basically none comes to my inbox, definitely less than one a week.
I don't know how many false positives there are: I only remember finding one once or twice (excluding a few automated emails I've explicitly requested right then and know to check for), but I don't normally look.
To reply
Status: Six messages.
Stuff where I need to make a specific reply. Either small (eg. I just want to say "Thank you, that's fine", but I want to wait an hour in case I forgot anything) or large.
Also some stuff that I need to deal with in another way -- eg. I need to add a "todo" item to a spreadsheet somewhere, or add a calendar reminder, etc.
This is something I need to work on. It works ok for stuff that comes in and I need to send a reply in a couple of days, but it tends to collect stuff which hangs around indefinitely because I need to do something in response but I haven't decided exactly what.
Ideally I'd work my way through from the _oldest_, so everything got dealt with or deleted. I'm a lot better about deleting stuff I'm never going to get to.
Reply/chat
Status: 26 messages
Messages that don't require a response in a specific timeframe, but I'd like to reply to. General "how are you?" emails and "hey, I had a thought about blah" emails, etc.
This folder is not intended to get done, just that when I have some time, I can dip in and reply to something.
It was incredibly useful to separate this category out from "to reply to". This is emails I didn't want to reply to yet (because I can't respond to a general chatty email from a friend instantly as its too overzealous and wouldn't leave me any time for anything else) but didn't want to forget about (because it's interesting and I wanted to stay in touch). If it all languished in "reply", it became impossible to find emails where I needed to methodically triage.
Unfortunately, I very rarely do have time to come back to these, so I've been totally ineffective at staying in touch with people. Sorry, people, I do love you!
Reply/waiting for
Status: Zero messages.
This is emails I've sent to someone and am waiting for a reply. If it's important to stick to a schedule I'll add a task reminder in google calendar saying "if X hasn't replied by now, decide what to do".
This used to fill up full of junk, as I'd mark every message I'd send "waiting for", and then forget to remove it when I got the reply. Now I'm more relaxed at saying "if they don't reply, then I'll just forget about it" or "if they don't reply, the next step is X, that can go on the task list or calendar."
I periodically check this and empty out a lot of stuff, mostly that doesn't matter, but occasionally there's something I think "I need to do something about this". If I find I'm not using this folder any more, I may delete it.
Reply/LJ-facebook
Status: 7 messages.
Social networking notifications I want to reply to. In fact, this gets cluttered easily, I should probably ignore anything for the last few most recent posts and assume I can browse them or browse my LJ/DW/facebook inbox to see what comments are new.
But it's useful when there's something interesting in an ongoing conversation on an older post, or similar.
Unfortunately, the half-a-dozen messages left are ones that are quite old, where someone said something interesting I'd like to reply to, but didn't figure out quite what.
Probably I should delete some of them and move the rest to "chat" to be "reply if I have time and feel like it" rather than feeling that they're on my TODO list.
Everything else
Status: Lots and lots and lots. I don't know how many. Tens of thousands?
Once upon a time, I used to try to file old emails in folders according to subject, etc, etc. Now I don't bother -- searching for an author or keyword can almost always find a message more easily than remembering how it was tagged.
I have a "ref" tag for stuff I feel I may want later but not be able to remember keywords from but I rarely use it. Occasionally for emails telling me someone's address or phone number that don't contain the word "address" or "phone number" -- I wish gmail could search for "numbers starting 07" or "blocks of letters in the form of a postcode".
Deleted
By default, when I've dealt with an email, I click "archive" and it vanishes, but can be found with search. My experience with source control makes me uncomfortable deleting anything because I know I might need it, and even if I only ever need to look up one email out of 10,000, it's still worth storing them.
However, I should go ahead and delete stuff like generic mailing list emails, because there's so many my stored email starts to feel flabby, and they keep coming in searches when they don't need to.
Summary
Inbox Zero no longer really applies. My actual inbox is always empty and has been for a long time. My "chat" and "reply" folders will never be actually empty (or I'm spending too much time dealing with my email!)
But a reasonable summary is:
Six emails overdue for a reply of some sort.
Thirty-two emails which could benefit from a reply but don't need it in a specific time frame.
Nothing else.
Go me!
I'm not going to go on obsessively improving my email -- the aim is to get it out of the way without losing important stuff, not to sort everything into colour-coded overlapping categories. But I have improved a lot, but still have problems.
Inbox
Status: Zero messages.
This is always at zero messages except when I'm away from the computer for a week. When I read a message it's immediately archived/deleted, moved to "reply", or replied to (if it just needs an acknowledgement).
Subfolders of inbox
Status: Zero messages.
Separate folders for social mailing lists, commercial mailing lists, social networking notifications, "it's your turn" notifications, etc. These are automatically filtered so all the predictable high-volume stuff (some very useful, some very useless) doesn't clog up the inbox. In fact, the inbox now usually only gets:
(i) Actual important messages, like human-written emails addressed directly to me
(ii) Everything else, random verbiage from websites I've had to sign up at, etc.
Spam
Status: Lots.
Gmail filters out spam. I really should check this more often, but I never get round to it. It gets automatically deleted after a month. Of "real" spam (basically, "stuff you can't subscribe from", not "stuff where you didn't really want the mailing list when you bought that but it's from a legitimate company"), basically none comes to my inbox, definitely less than one a week.
I don't know how many false positives there are: I only remember finding one once or twice (excluding a few automated emails I've explicitly requested right then and know to check for), but I don't normally look.
To reply
Status: Six messages.
Stuff where I need to make a specific reply. Either small (eg. I just want to say "Thank you, that's fine", but I want to wait an hour in case I forgot anything) or large.
Also some stuff that I need to deal with in another way -- eg. I need to add a "todo" item to a spreadsheet somewhere, or add a calendar reminder, etc.
This is something I need to work on. It works ok for stuff that comes in and I need to send a reply in a couple of days, but it tends to collect stuff which hangs around indefinitely because I need to do something in response but I haven't decided exactly what.
Ideally I'd work my way through from the _oldest_, so everything got dealt with or deleted. I'm a lot better about deleting stuff I'm never going to get to.
Reply/chat
Status: 26 messages
Messages that don't require a response in a specific timeframe, but I'd like to reply to. General "how are you?" emails and "hey, I had a thought about blah" emails, etc.
This folder is not intended to get done, just that when I have some time, I can dip in and reply to something.
It was incredibly useful to separate this category out from "to reply to". This is emails I didn't want to reply to yet (because I can't respond to a general chatty email from a friend instantly as its too overzealous and wouldn't leave me any time for anything else) but didn't want to forget about (because it's interesting and I wanted to stay in touch). If it all languished in "reply", it became impossible to find emails where I needed to methodically triage.
Unfortunately, I very rarely do have time to come back to these, so I've been totally ineffective at staying in touch with people. Sorry, people, I do love you!
Reply/waiting for
Status: Zero messages.
This is emails I've sent to someone and am waiting for a reply. If it's important to stick to a schedule I'll add a task reminder in google calendar saying "if X hasn't replied by now, decide what to do".
This used to fill up full of junk, as I'd mark every message I'd send "waiting for", and then forget to remove it when I got the reply. Now I'm more relaxed at saying "if they don't reply, then I'll just forget about it" or "if they don't reply, the next step is X, that can go on the task list or calendar."
I periodically check this and empty out a lot of stuff, mostly that doesn't matter, but occasionally there's something I think "I need to do something about this". If I find I'm not using this folder any more, I may delete it.
Reply/LJ-facebook
Status: 7 messages.
Social networking notifications I want to reply to. In fact, this gets cluttered easily, I should probably ignore anything for the last few most recent posts and assume I can browse them or browse my LJ/DW/facebook inbox to see what comments are new.
But it's useful when there's something interesting in an ongoing conversation on an older post, or similar.
Unfortunately, the half-a-dozen messages left are ones that are quite old, where someone said something interesting I'd like to reply to, but didn't figure out quite what.
Probably I should delete some of them and move the rest to "chat" to be "reply if I have time and feel like it" rather than feeling that they're on my TODO list.
Everything else
Status: Lots and lots and lots. I don't know how many. Tens of thousands?
Once upon a time, I used to try to file old emails in folders according to subject, etc, etc. Now I don't bother -- searching for an author or keyword can almost always find a message more easily than remembering how it was tagged.
I have a "ref" tag for stuff I feel I may want later but not be able to remember keywords from but I rarely use it. Occasionally for emails telling me someone's address or phone number that don't contain the word "address" or "phone number" -- I wish gmail could search for "numbers starting 07" or "blocks of letters in the form of a postcode".
Deleted
By default, when I've dealt with an email, I click "archive" and it vanishes, but can be found with search. My experience with source control makes me uncomfortable deleting anything because I know I might need it, and even if I only ever need to look up one email out of 10,000, it's still worth storing them.
However, I should go ahead and delete stuff like generic mailing list emails, because there's so many my stored email starts to feel flabby, and they keep coming in searches when they don't need to.
Summary
Inbox Zero no longer really applies. My actual inbox is always empty and has been for a long time. My "chat" and "reply" folders will never be actually empty (or I'm spending too much time dealing with my email!)
But a reasonable summary is:
Six emails overdue for a reply of some sort.
Thirty-two emails which could benefit from a reply but don't need it in a specific time frame.
Nothing else.
Go me!
I'm not going to go on obsessively improving my email -- the aim is to get it out of the way without losing important stuff, not to sort everything into colour-coded overlapping categories. But I have improved a lot, but still have problems.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-01 07:12 pm (UTC)I tag those "address."
But if you use search, why not forward the email to yourself with "so and so's address" in the forwarding text?
If I'm in a g-chat with someone and they blurt out their address, I immediately type "Tag address" so I can search my chats for that phrase. Any other phrase would work too if you could remember it.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-02 12:26 pm (UTC)