Ask HN: Please share your e-mail workflow, tips. | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Please share your e-mail workflow, tips.

5 pointsantileet4 comments

Hi,

I, like most people here, get a lot of email - mailing lists, bug notifications, notifications from services I don't care about, and even the occasional real email from friends and family. In short, my email became a source agnostic dumping ground which served as a constant distraction and annoyance. Everything from someone un-CCing themselves from a bug report, to telling me about their marriage is suddenly equal.

I had some trouble dealing with it all, and felt there was information overload and started looking at alternate means of getting the information that actually matters to me.

I want to hear how you manage your email and information overload. Are there some specific workflows like Merlin Mann's "Inbox Zero" which seem to have worked for you? Are there any secret and interesting email clients that help you deal with information overload?

My workflow is slightly better now. I use sup [1] to read and vim to write my messages. I wrote my own tool [2] to deal with bugzilla and comment notifications. I've learned to turn off email and check it only once every few hours - which helped boost productivity at the expense of not being instantly available.

So please, share your secrets! Thank you!

[1] - http://sup.rubyforge.org [2] - http://anirudhsanjeev.org/projects/splatter

Okay, here's my experience with e-mailing.

Setup:

- I use an ordinary Gmail Email (for 4 years). It gets around 200 email per day (that's around 8 emails/hour).

- Apart from the usual email, I have few other emails with domains (like support@mydomain.com). I use Google apps for them and I forward all emails that I receive from these domains to the main ordinary Gmail Email.

Benefits:

- The ordinary email works like a repository for all my emails. By checking it, I check all emails I have.

- The domains emails make it easier for me to arrange emails and keep a record of them. For example, I'm using a separate email address for my PayPal account. This keeps a record of all received or sent payments. In the same time, when I get a payment, the email show up on my primary email and then I get notified without the need to check all my in-boxes.

Usage:

1- When at home (my office), I run Gtalk full time (rarely my friends nudge me). When I get an email, GTalk pops up a box. I quickly read the email title. If it's the usual spam (80% of my emails are useless), I just ignore it, if it's an important one, I pause work and open my mail box.

2- When outside doors, I use my mobile to check emails. Doesn't have a regular checking time, but when I feel I want to check I check. If there is an important email, I read it; but most of the time reply when I get back home.

3- I sleep like all humans. When I wake up, the first thing I do (before anything) is running my netbook, check emails, reply or read and then archive them all. My inbox is now empty! A new day, get back at point 1.

Usability:

- Make use of the Gmail Star (also Gmail keeps emails conversations gathered in one email, that's the most useful feature).

- Hit the Spam button

I've been using David Allen's "Getting Things Done" methodology for about three years now and I find it works really well.

When dealing with mail the principle I follow is to use the inbox purely as an inbox and not a substitute "to-do" list.

What that means is I process each message, one at a time, starting from the oldest. I don't skip ahead to "interesting" mails. If the mail can be handled in under two minutes, I just do it. If not, I create a related task (in EMacs org-mode (which is utterly fantastic but any old text file with categories can be used)) and handle that outside the mailing system.

The mail itself gets filed into a specific category archive folder for reference. My inbox is almost always empty which is a GREAT feeling for some reason.

EDIT: Thanks for the link to sup btw. I use mutt but the 'search' feature seems tempting.

I've used a number of different email clients, but I think that the simplest tools, if applied properly, should solve this problem. Trouble is, though, is that's really specific to what mail you get.

When someone un-CCs themselves from a bug report, find something that's common to every subject line (or better yet, the sending address, since it's probably your tracking software's server), and make a filter for that. Also, I think most clients allow you to distinguish between mails just to you and mass emails. I would just make a folder for every category you can think of, set up the filters as best you can, and then prioritize the categories. Emails that are written solely to you and don't look like notifications you get on a regular basis are probably the most important. Then replies, etc...

This may be useful for you

The Zen of Mastering E-mail: In Under 100 words http://bighow.com/news/the-zen-of-mastering-email-in-under-1...

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