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I wanted to take this opportunity to give a shameless endorsement of Google's Inbox app. I prefer something like what the article called the "piler" strategy.
by thedevil 10y ago
I wanted to take this opportunity to give a shameless endorsement of Google's Inbox app.
I prefer something like what the article called the "piler" strategy. I don't like spending precious time and energy organizing things. But the problem is if I have too many things in front of me, I can't concentrate. My anxiety builds up. My creativity vanishes.
The Inbox app lets me reach an optimal balance of order and productivity. It's changed my life. And ever since, I've been proselytizing it.
This post thinks that you have to trade off order and productivity, but why not both? It now sounds like a false trade-off to me.
(PS Using search rather than categories and folders for email and files also was a big win but I'm not as excited about that now because that was years ago.)
- Shank 10y agoCompletely agree. Low priority gets 90% of my inbox, and I only ever glance at, but rarely open the contents. Sometimes something catches my eye, but the vast majority of the time it doesn't and I just end up archiving it. Search does work wonders, though, and I find myself using that a lot more to find emails, but it's so fast I consider it frictionless.
- GrinningFool 10y agoMissing the eighth or tenth meeting invite because it was auto-filed as an 'update' and never notified me, as well as similar experiences with messages I consider 'important' put an end to Inbox for me. I did first try 'training' it by moving things where they should be, but Inbox never changed what it did.
- dasil003 10y agoYeah this machine learning and personal assistant tech is on the ugly side of the uncanny valley right now. When we have the Star Trek computer then I'll get on board, but right now apps like Inbox flat out create more stress than save time.
- knz 10y agoWhat is the advantage of the Inbox App over just using the archive button and maintaining only a few important emails in the regular inbox? I did briefly try the Inbox app when it first came out but found the automatic sorting meant I occasionally missed important emails. If you use the regular inbox and the archive button you can at least see everything coming in and decide if it is important. I've been aggressive about disabling email from services that offer their own inbox (Facebook, Asana, Github etc) and unsubscribing from automated email lists - that helps limit how much I am archiving.
- thedevil 10y agoReminders and snoozing are key differences from gmail. Also, I disabled bundling right away after I started using Inbox. The bundling is useful sometimes but I thought it more pain than it's worth. Perhaps that's why more people don't use Inbox.