Redefining Email Processing
I believe that it is human nature to complicate things unconsciously. We tweak, we add, and suddenly we are left with a behemoth that might not be serving us all that well. My email is no exception, and I got to the point where I was unable to process email at all. I spent some time redefining email processing with the goal of simplifying the process while not losing track of any email.
My Previous Process
My email approach was a conglomeration of various methods touted at various times. I use Gmail at the base, and would try out methods as I found them. Let’s just say that with various theories and no overall plan, things got out of control.
Labels
One of the best features of Gmail is that you can label each email with one or many labels to make it easy to find again.
Through the filters built into Gmail, I assigned labels based on who it was from, what address it went to, or keywords in the email itself.
I created filters so that none of my email was unfiled. And as an extension of that, I also had them automatically removed from my inbox. This kept my inbox clean of the noise that came in via newsletters and mailing lists, and kept my email in nice buckets for later processing.
At its peak (worst?) I had over 75 filters to label and move my email.
+ Addressing
One of the great features of Gmail is the ability to use “+ addressing”. This means that you can give your base address and assign a + modifier to it and it will still come to your account. For example, if your address is X2489s@gmail.com, you could sign up for a newsletter using X2489s+newsletter@gmail.com, and it would still come to your regular inbox. You could then filter on the modifier and put those items in a place for later reading.
I used this to sort newsletters and mailing lists from general email. I filtered these items into a folder where I could read them without urgency.
Multiple Accounts
Gmail allows you to POP various other email accounts into your Gmail. Since I have multiple accounts, I set up POP to get my main home email. I also redirected other accounts, such as the various blog email accounts, to automatically forward to my Gmail.
As a result, I had 9 email accounts dumping into Gmail. I labeled these so I could tell at a glance where it came from.
What Wasn’t Working
So after adding things on in all the years that I have been using GMail, I found that the system had stopped being useful, and in fact was causing some problems.
Lost Emails
Because many of my emails skipped the inbox and went directly to the label folder, I would not see the email unless I drilled down through layers of labels. With the limited space on the screen to show labels, some got hidden unless specifically set to show with unread email. So if I didn’t notice that there was something to be read, I would miss the email.
Some emails also vanished if I mistakenly archived them without labels. This was more of a problem on the iPad, where I use controls to click instead of keyboard actions. But there had been many times I wasn’t able to find what I needed to because it wasn’t labeled properly.
Reference Material Mixed In With Actions
Since most of my email was labeled and then the inbox skipped, I found emails with things to do mixed in with things I needed to save as reference materials.
For example, a newsletter from the pet store tells me I need to get over there to take advantage of a sale on dog biscuits. Yet this was mixed in with newsletters from craft stores, blog affiliates, Microsoft and various charities and courses I have subscribed to.
Having the reference materials mixed in with things I needed to act on caused many things to get lost in the shuffle.
Lagging Processing
As the result of one suggested process improvement, I had implemented Action labels. When I needed to respond, I would send the email to “_Action/Respond”. All told, under the _Action label, I had the following sub-labels: Action, Respond, Waiting For, File, Read.
What happened, largely due to my unread email piling up, was that these folders never got processed. I missed deadlines, got second inquiries on email I hadn’t answered, and even got a concerned phone call from a friend because she hadn’t heard from me in so long.
Useless Information Allowed To Pile Up
Since incoming mail ended up all over the place, and email that needed action was mixed in, it is no wonder that I ended up with a lot of useless information piling up. Newsletters, in particular, sat in the folder and didn’t get read. For months.
By the time I would get around to reading them, I had to wade through many newsletters and out-of-date information to find what I wanted. Often I ended up bulk deleting everything.
The Irony
The irony of this process is that all of these tweaks were supposed to make email more efficient. I was supposed to see everything and deal with it quickly because it had all been sorted and cataloged.
Enter A Simplified System
I was first introduced to this overall system by an iOS app called Mailbox. It’s no longer available, but its strength was a set of fixed labels to sort everything into limited labels with a simplified interface.
Since I had so little information hitting my inbox, there was little for me to do in the program. But there was something I realized: I had way more mail than was hitting the inbox, and it was snarling up when it wasn’t in the inbox.
The Buckets
I still use the simplified processing labels in Gmail. The top level label is called [Process]. The brackets make it float to the top of the label list. Underneath it are:
- Action. For things I need to take action on. These will end up in my task list.
- Enter. For things I need to enter elsewhere, like receipts.
- Waiting For. For things I am waiting for.
- Respond. This is where correspondence I need to respond to goes. I chose to keep this separate from Actions because Actions can sit once they have been forwarded to Remember The Milk.
My Filters
I emptied out my filters. I deleted everything except the ones which keeps things from going to spam; and the two to delete email from 2 particular people outright (email form of blocking).
I have since added in three more: two to flag orders and donations from the blog and one to move Google Voice notifications to a specific folder.
Removing Other Email
My email was a nightmare of incoming information from 10 different places. I consolidated some emails and deleted others. Instead of using Gmail to consolidate them, I use Spark on my iOS devices. This allows me to access all of my emails in one place, but with the added benefit of leaving it in the account it came from.
I don’t have to deal with blog email, Yahoo, or my ISP email very often. Leaving it in Spark keeps everything cleaner.
My Gmail Process
Twice a day I go through through my main Gmail account. I work my way through my inbox, deleting the trash, unsubscribing from what is not useful, and putting emails in Action, Waiting For and Respond as needed.
After I am done with this, I could forward all email in Action and Respond to my task manager, but I have a bit of programming that does this automatically for me.
My inbox is now manageable, and I haven’t lost track of an email in well over a year.
Side Effect: Purging Incoming Email
One of the side effects of this process is that I have unsubscribed to many, many lists…lists that I didn’t even realize I was on. If I can’t be bothered to read it when it is in the inbox, I unsubscribe right then and there.
This simplified system has transformed my relationship with email from one of stress and overwhelm to confident control. By stripping away the complexity and focusing on what matters, I’ve found that less really is more when it comes to email management. The key is to handle email intentionally and simply. Sometimes the best productivity gains come not from adding new tools, but from thoughtfully removing what isn’t serving us well.