30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it • Hacker News Board

Re: 30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it

#21

Post by jedahan » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 6:27 PM UTC

I get around 50 emails a day, and hover around inbox 40

Removing all filters and categorization has helped me reach this number, and forced a few habits and mindset changes:

1: I aggressively unsubscribe from mailing lists. If you have to make a filter to automatically archive a mailing list because you never read it but want to keep it just unsubscribe. If you have to, bookmark the site but if you aren't reading it now when will you be?

2: I ask a lot more of the people who email me. If I have partial answers I send those immediately, and if I know I won't get around to it for a while I make it clear that it will take time. I err on the side of archiving unfinished conversations as if it is important most people are OK with sending a follow-up email.

Re: 30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it

#22

Post by jbl » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 6:30 PM UTC

nsmnsf wrote: post #4

cmd + a, delete?

I do sometimes declare e-mail bankruptcy and just archive/move everything to a folder for later reference. To the OPs point, if something is important, people will generally follow-up.

Re: 30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it

#23

Post by gmays » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 6:38 PM UTC

I'm making a to-do list for Gmail as a browser extension. It'll be free and I should have screenshots up in the next week if time allows. If you're interested, get on the list here:

http://toduh.com

Re: 30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it

#24

Post by weland » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 6:49 PM UTC

Can, uh, can someone please explain me how exactly you end up with a hundred mails in inbox? Every day?

This is a genuine question, please bear with me. I follow several high-traffic mailing lists, and I use e-mail as my primary means of Internet communication, because I started using it back when ICQ wasn't all the rage yet. But they're all tidied up and filtered. Checking my e-mail in the morning takes, what, five minutes, plus 10-15 minutes or so of reading messages from the mailing lists that I actively read because they're really important for my work. Every couple of days or so I spend maybe another thirty minutes skimming the other mailing lists, but an hour of e-mail is pretty much something that I've never done. Do various service-related e-mails pile up, like Facebook's neverending stream of notifications? If so, why is this news-worthy?

I regularly hear about it, and regularly hear that Gmail is particularly adept at dealing with this. I don't use Gmail; I have an old account there, opened when it was still invitation-based because every techie had to have one of course, but I'm not really sure about what else it can do other than, you know, filter messages. Are there any additional capabilities here?

And, Interwebs, please don't take this the wrong way -- I'm not trying to put up the smug l33t h4x0r attitude who doesn't understand how kids nowadays misuse computers, I'm really trying to understand how people use e-mail nowadays.

Re: 30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it

#25

Post by wbsun » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 6:51 PM UTC

just feel surprised there exist people who think using email filter is something worth showing off!

Re: 30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it

#26

Post by rjzzleep » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 6:52 PM UTC

edit: for those thinking that unsubscribe is a good idea. it's not. changing your email to a junkmail email before unsubscribing from services you don't need anymore is a better approach

for mutt users this is really easy to accomplish even with many mail accounts. create a macro file eg. ~/.mutt/macros:

    # have to be sourced on folder hooks
    macro index,pager ,a "=$my_account_name/archive"
    macro index,pager ,p "=$my_account_name/pending"
    macro index,pager gi "=$my_account_name/inbox" "Go to inbox"
    macro index,pager ga "=$my_account_name/archive" "Go to archive"
    macro index,pager gp "=$my_account_name/pending" "Go to pending"
    macro index,pager gs "=$my_account_name/sent" "Go to Sent Mail"
    macro index,pager gd "=$my_account_name/drafts" "Go to drafts"
    # vim: syntax=muttrc

now in your account hook do the following:

    folder-hook gmail \
       ' \
       set my_account_name=gmail ;\
       source ~/.mutt/macros ;\
       ....

afterwards type `T*,aG` and all your current email will be archived. from then on you can use the quick bindings for accessing all your mail with those shortcuts

Re: 30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it

#27

Post by trevoragilbert » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 6:53 PM UTC

My problem with solutions like this is that they never seem to fit any other people's methods of working. Saying things like "Only check e-mail twice per day" is not going to work for 95% of the people that are reading this (rough guess).

If I only checked email twice per day, I'd just end the day with 500 emails that need responding to all in one bunch. On top of that, many of them would no longer be timely, disrupting other people's days and slowing others down.

Am I alone in thinking like this?

Re: 30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it

#28

Post by pieterhg » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 6:53 PM UTC

fishtoaster wrote: post #19

Jemaclus wrote: post #15

I feel like I'm the only person in the world who doesn't have this problem, even though I get a bajillion emails a day. Why is it so hard to hit Inbox Zero?

I would imagine it depends heavily on your email load. I get plenty of email, but the majority of it is automated, so with my gmail fitlers, I have only 2-3 per day that I actually need to read. OP, on the other hand, is the founder of Grouper, and presumably gets dozens or hundreds of emails from real people requesting his time, input, or other resources. As such, there's significantly more effort involved in determ…

Minor nitpick but the page shows he's the founder of Grouper, not Groupon.

Re: 30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it

#29

Post by aalpbalkan » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 7:07 PM UTC

If you don't have any concerns regarding privacy or security, use Mailbox app http://www.mailboxapp.com/ I do #inboxzero very easily and it's so piece of cake, I don't need to write blog post about to tell how I did it.

Re: 30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it

#30

Post by slgeorge » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 7:35 PM UTC

weland wrote: post #24

Can, uh, can someone please explain me how exactly you end up with a hundred mails in inbox? Every day? This is a genuine question, please bear with me. I follow several high-traffic mailing lists, and I use e-mail as my primary means of Internet communication, because I started using it back when ICQ wasn't all the rage yet. But they're all tidied up and filtered. Checking my e-mail in the morning takes, what, five…

I think it's a very "role specific" problem.

You sound like you're in a really lucky situation where neither your specific job, not your organisation has a big email culture.

But, for a lot of roles or organisations they use email for distributed tasking. Even in a reasonably small technical team I'd say this is common - so you start receiving email that requires response due to it either being a task or it checking on status on a task.

It becomes even more difficult in situations where your response is required quickly as business is being blocked while you don't respond. A lot of (for want of a better word) middle management roles fall in this category.

There is a bit of the 'hero' problem about email management and far too much "FYI"'ing but it is a real problem. Ultimately, the cost to "send" an email is a lot less than on the X people who you just asked for a reply. So in some senses the impression of zero friction communication is very costly.