11–20 of 43 posts
After not understanding how it was possible to get inbox zero, I remembered that Gmail has an Archive box. I personally leave everything in the inbox and concern myself about reading all emails flagged important... am I the only one to not use the archive function?
After not understanding how it was possible to get inbox zero, I remembered that Gmail has an Archive box. I personally leave everything in the inbox and concern myself about reading all emails flagged important... am I the only one to not use the archive function?
I actually don't know anyone that uses the archive function. My "inbox zero" equivalent is to have no unread e-mails as I often leave e-mails that I need to respond to or handle as unread.
If you think of your inbox as a to-do list (where the most basic task is "read this"), then the most common pattern ITDBG (In The Days Before Gmail) for managing your to-do was using read/unread as your done/todo flags.
This was annoying; when reading an email that can't be actioned right away you'd have to go back and mark it as unread. Trivial, but it always felt like there was a better way.
When Gmail launched with it's Archive feature, it was definitely an "ah-hah!" moment. Now the read/unread flags had no hidden meaning, and your to-do list was simply whatever your saw in your inbox. When you action an email, away to the archive it goes.
Reaching inbox-zero is a gloriously satisfying moment. Why yes ... I WILL read some google news.
This beeminder thing is cool, they should make an app so I can limit how much time I spend on things such as Reddit or Hacker News.
Here's me beeminding my time on Hacker News: http://beeminder.com/d/hn
After not understanding how it was possible to get inbox zero, I remembered that Gmail has an Archive box. I personally leave everything in the inbox and concern myself about reading all emails flagged important... am I the only one to not use the archive function?
you are a piler: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archiv...
I am a piler. I agree with responding to email appropriately, but it is definitely just going to get left in my inbox.
Does this work with Priority Inbox? I don't even had a 'Read' counter...
I personally don't like the priority inbox concept. I really want to have full control over what I allow to go out of sight out of mind. If I got a truly overwhelming amount of email then I guess I'd be happy to trust that to Google.
In a sense I do have an overwhelming amount of email but not so much that I can't at least look at everything that comes in and decide for myself what can be ignored.
E-mails I care about are filtered into folders or marked as important.
After not understanding how it was possible to get inbox zero, I remembered that Gmail has an Archive box. I personally leave everything in the inbox and concern myself about reading all emails flagged important... am I the only one to not use the archive function?
I actually don't know anyone that uses the archive function. My "inbox zero" equivalent is to have no unread e-mails as I often leave e-mails that I need to respond to or handle as unread.
5 overall states for email:
unread
read+star (urgent/reminder)
read (todo/reference for current tasks/projects)
archived (done + keep for reference)
deleted (done + not needed for reference, or ignored altogether) - so "your amazon order shipped" etc.
I don't keep the inbox empty, but there are only emails regarding ACTIVE tasks/conversations in it, its natural state is 0 unread emails, as if you don't do that, well chaos awaits.
Archive Tip; you can reply+archive; gmail resurrects the whole conversation if you get a reply back, so you can pick up the whole thing if something you thought was done with gets resurrected. (useful for those "here's an answer, hit me up again if that's no good" replies)
The flip side is; I don't bother with labels at all, search just seems to render that redundant as far as I can see.