5 ms·

How can you reduce your emails by 50% a day?

17 points by niccolop 16y ago

mr_justin 16y ago
I like the simplicity of using an alt email account that sends you daily digests. OtherInbox is an example, though I do not endorse that service in particular.
- lukeschlather 16y ago
  I just have gmail tags like 'facebookspam' that skip inbox and I can peruse at my leisure. Usually just to mass mark as read.
hugh3 16y ago
I want to know how I can increase my volume of interesting emails by 50% per day.
- lionhearted 16y ago
  I feel the same way. I like talking with people about cool things, I'd say 80% of the cool stuff I'm introduced to originally comes from someone I'm in touch with. Hacker News included. So I tell you what, hugh - why don't you write me an interesting email and I'll write back? What are your key goals you're working on? Or recommend me a book, or ask for a book recommendation on a particular topic. I'll write back. All details in my profile. Hell, anyone can write me if you're a decent person. You - yes you - what are you working on that's important to you right now?
arnorhs 16y ago
If sometimes thought about the e-mail problem. I'd like to make an app that let's you do the following: 1) You sign up for an account. 2) You feed the app your e-mail address, username, passowrd, hostname. Multiple e-mail addresses if you have them. 3) The app would then regularly check up on your e-mail and combine all your aggregated e-mails like notifications etc into a single e-mail, which you could check out any time you like. 4) The app could filter some spam (if you have a host that doesn't have spam filtering) 5) The app could do smart stuff with your e-mails like pulling all the contacts that send you e-mail and creating a centralized contacts list automatically (maybe even attempting to parse signatures) 6) It would also be nice if you could use the app as your webmail, if your host doesn't already support webmail (they are out there) And you could probably think of more features. It could be really helpful for people stuck with horrible e-mail hosts.
- timcederman 16y ago
  Haven't you just described Gmail?
  - arnorhs 16y ago
    Maybe I did. Good point. Can you use gmail with other mail hosts? That is, without google apps?
ww520 16y ago
Here's how you should deal with emails after a long vacation. Ctrl-A and Delete. If it's important enough, it will be re-sent. Edit: I see lot of downvotes. But I wasn't joking. What's more important in life? Doing busy work with your inbox? If an email sitting in your inbox for more than a week and have no impact on your life even you haven't dealt with it, it probably really has no impact on your life.
- lionhearted 16y ago
  Nah, that's not necessary. I had 700 emails in my inbox three months ago, and I got them down to 0 after about a month. I set milestones: -Inbox to 600 -Inbox to 500 -Inbox to 400 -Inbox to 300 -Inbox to 200 -Inbox to 100 -Inbox to 70 -Inbox to 50 -Inbox to 30 -Inbox to 15 -Inbox to 10 -Inbox to 5 -Inbox empty I figured it'd get harder to clear down as it got closer to the bottom. In the beginning it was easy - search and archive newsletters, alerts, digests, and spam. Archive all emails from someone after I got off the phone with them and covered everything, but let the old request sit in the box. Archive all emails from ex-girlfriend. Etc. Interestingly, I had a lot of little milestones at the end, but it turns out it wasn't as hard as I thought: There were about 10 emails that I used a reminder for "general to do" that I added to a notepad file to-do list, and archived them. Then there was about 5 decisions where there was no particularly good decision and I didn't like my choices, so I just sacked up and picked one option or the other and did it. Like, one of them was canceling something that had an early cancel fee, and I'd been waffling on it, and I just said screw it and picked one way or the other. I don't even remember the details, which means I should have probably just picked the first time I looked at it. Anyways, email inbox can be overwhelming if it's big. Tackle it in chunks, almost make a game out of it. It's nice to keep crossing off things on the list... 700... 600... 500... 400... was quite a good feeling. It's nice to be organized, too.
  - ww520 16y ago
    That sounds like a lot of work. Dealing with inbox becomes a fulltime job.
    - 16y ago
espadagroup 16y ago
This actually looks pretty cool and useful, but it's in beta, way to douse my excitement with a cold bucket of waiting
herdrick 16y ago
By responding to fewer of them, more slowly, that's how.

17 points by niccolop 16y ago

I like the simplicity of using an alt email account that sends you daily digests. OtherInbox is an example, though I do not endorse that service in particular.

lukeschlather 16y ago
I just have gmail tags like 'facebookspam' that skip inbox and I can peruse at my leisure. Usually just to mass mark as read.

hugh3 16y ago

I want to know how I can increase my volume of interesting emails by 50% per day.

lionhearted 16y ago
I feel the same way. I like talking with people about cool things, I'd say 80% of the cool stuff I'm introduced to originally comes from someone I'm in touch with. Hacker News included. So I tell you what, hugh - why don't you write me an interesting email and I'll write back? What are your key goals you're working on? Or recommend me a book, or ask for a book recommendation on a particular topic. I'll write back. All details in my profile. Hell, anyone can write me if you're a decent person. You - yes you - what are you working on that's important to you right now?

arnorhs 16y ago

If sometimes thought about the e-mail problem. I'd like to make an app that let's you do the following: 1) You sign up for an account. 2) You feed the app your e-mail address, username, passowrd, hostname. Multiple e-mail addresses if you have them. 3) The app would then regularly check up on your e-mail and combine all your aggregated e-mails like notifications etc into a single e-mail, which you could check out any time you like. 4) The app could filter some spam (if you have a host that doesn't have spam filtering) 5) The app could do smart stuff with your e-mails like pulling all the contacts that send you e-mail and creating a centralized contacts list automatically (maybe even attempting to parse signatures) 6) It would also be nice if you could use the app as your webmail, if your host doesn't already support webmail (they are out there) And you could probably think of more features. It could be really helpful for people stuck with horrible e-mail hosts.

timcederman 16y ago
Haven't you just described Gmail?
- arnorhs 16y ago
  Maybe I did. Good point. Can you use gmail with other mail hosts? That is, without google apps?

ww520 16y ago

Here's how you should deal with emails after a long vacation. Ctrl-A and Delete. If it's important enough, it will be re-sent. Edit: I see lot of downvotes. But I wasn't joking. What's more important in life? Doing busy work with your inbox? If an email sitting in your inbox for more than a week and have no impact on your life even you haven't dealt with it, it probably really has no impact on your life.

lionhearted 16y ago
Nah, that's not necessary. I had 700 emails in my inbox three months ago, and I got them down to 0 after about a month. I set milestones: -Inbox to 600 -Inbox to 500 -Inbox to 400 -Inbox to 300 -Inbox to 200 -Inbox to 100 -Inbox to 70 -Inbox to 50 -Inbox to 30 -Inbox to 15 -Inbox to 10 -Inbox to 5 -Inbox empty I figured it'd get harder to clear down as it got closer to the bottom. In the beginning it was easy - search and archive newsletters, alerts, digests, and spam. Archive all emails from someone after I got off the phone with them and covered everything, but let the old request sit in the box. Archive all emails from ex-girlfriend. Etc. Interestingly, I had a lot of little milestones at the end, but it turns out it wasn't as hard as I thought: There were about 10 emails that I used a reminder for "general to do" that I added to a notepad file to-do list, and archived them. Then there was about 5 decisions where there was no particularly good decision and I didn't like my choices, so I just sacked up and picked one option or the other and did it. Like, one of them was canceling something that had an early cancel fee, and I'd been waffling on it, and I just said screw it and picked one way or the other. I don't even remember the details, which means I should have probably just picked the first time I looked at it. Anyways, email inbox can be overwhelming if it's big. Tackle it in chunks, almost make a game out of it. It's nice to keep crossing off things on the list... 700... 600... 500... 400... was quite a good feeling. It's nice to be organized, too.
- ww520 16y ago
  That sounds like a lot of work. Dealing with inbox becomes a fulltime job.
  - 16y ago

espadagroup 16y ago

This actually looks pretty cool and useful, but it's in beta, way to douse my excitement with a cold bucket of waiting

herdrick 16y ago

By responding to fewer of them, more slowly, that's how.