Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

Oooh I like this very much, though it looks like I'm not allowed to play with it just yet on my account.

Labels and filters solve several Gmail problems but demand too much footwork on my part. I found that my Gmail experience got better when I adopted this credo about two weeks ago:

Thou shalt have but one Gmail label, and that label's name shalt be "Needs Reply".

Either it can wait, and be there when I specifically look (search) for it, or it needs a reply. I need to know which emails need replies, and I generally need to label them manually.

Labels beyond this I view as a distraction. I used to label everything, now I label nothing. The fewer you can use the better, I think.

And yet I still want a label or two for all the semi-solicited mail I get. Things that I do not need in my inbox, but ought to be there for my idle perusement: Banana Republic sales, MyHabit "deals", Newegg dailies, Kindle book of the day deals, and so on.

And then there are things like Facebook updates. Nice to know, but I'll get to them eventually anyway the next time I open up Facebook, which I look at about as much as my grandmother checks the weather (read: Every hour, and for no reason).

If this wants to distill my system for me then I'm ready with open arms. Bigger tabs at the top are way better than a hard-to-parse list on the side. Can't they turn it off for a complainer and roll it out to me?

That's really interesting. You don't even label emails you've archived? I like to chuck "invoice" on everything that represents money changing hands: actual invoices, e-purchase emails (congrats on buying this game / software, here is your key), stuff like that. I also have a few others about specific topics.

In terms of labeling emails that need replies for me if it's still in the inbox if it needs a reply / action. If I'm done with an email I archive it.

I like to keep a Zero Inbox as well so labelling things is absolutely essential, I have over 20 labels. Seeing the 2000 unread emails in my girlfriends inbox makes my eye twitch.

My unread 26,000 may kill you.

I thought I was doing well with 12,800!

Every time I read comments on HN about how people have these "amazing" systems of filtering and labeling in gmail I always wonder if there's anyone else who uses gmail like I use it.... turns out there is and they've doubled my high score.

The owner of the (small) company I work at has 55k+ unread in his inbox. I suggested a few weeks ago he move to the priority inbox in an attempt to deal with the crazy inflow he manages.

I am in the 50K range, have thought of hiring someone to archive it for me.

Maybe an IMAP client can help in this instance? Thunderbird access to Gmail might make some mass operations like that much quicker...

I think that labels become problematic because the more things you label, the closer looking at "All emails labeled X" looks just like a search.

In other words, to be the most useful, a label needs to have as few uses as possible, or else become a separate folder for perusing. And if a label looks just like a search, skip the clutter and just do the search. If its a bin for perusing, well, good on this new feature.

I can't imagine when I'd want to view all emails labeled "Invoice", for instance. If I know I'm looking for a software key, then doing a search will be much faster than clicking on the label and eyeballing it for the right one.

In your example that's also something you have to label manually. If you forget one and then look through the "Invoice" label folder and don't find it, you have to go do a search anyway. As much as possible I want to reduce the number of things that could be screwed up by mere forgetfulness. So by not using labels there is no chance of screwing it up, and there's less work to do to boot.

So I'd rather not concern myself with taking the time to organize my to-be-archived emails into labels unless it represents a non-trivial gain, and I don't think the gains are very large in nearly every practical case. "Needs-reply" is the only one, since it represents a separate queue of to-do emails.

That doesn't fit the bill and would be efficient if you only had 1 sender per label. Nearly all of my labels have a one-to-many relationship, and so recreating that 'search' would first require me to remember each of the parties involved, find their email address, and then manually construct the query. I think his example is poor use, I think the suggested usage pattern is to take the 10s the first time you have a new contact (that falls under a label) and filter all future messages, making it a 1-click operation to access that archive going forward.

I think your logic is seriously flawed, but as long as it's your email and not mine, so be it!

> I think that labels become problematic because the more things you label, the closer looking at "All emails labeled X" looks just like a search.

Labelling is a way of demonstrating intent, though. I want to see tax-related invoices for the organisation I'm helping out with; not everything actually has the words "invoice" in it, or mention the organisation.

Either you need to introduce AI for me to teach, or let me impose search information on the email itself. Tagging is just a way of doing the latter.

I don't label either - searching has served me fine.

I discovered another approach recently that works great.

If an email needs a reply, I hit reply and save it as a draft.

My drafts is now my one and only email to-do list.

For emails that need a reply, I just keep those as "marked unread". There's no way I forget about those.

I star them instead. It's one click/keypress and they don't unstar themselves next time I open them (accidentally or not).

Thou shalt have but one Gmail label, and that label's name shalt be "Needs Reply".

I'm glad this works for you, but keeping track of and searching through years of emails -- and chats -- with dozens of disparate people and clients makes labels, or something similar, indispensable to me.

Going overboard and having a label for everything under the sun would, for most of us, decrease their utility. But in at least some use cases, having many labels definitely is not in and of itself a bad thing.

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