9 ms·

Ask HN: How often do you email yourself and why?

6 points by adawg4 6y ago

ddon 6y ago
Used to email myself a lot, but now sending Telegram messages to myself. Nothing beats ability to send text, images, videos and audio messages, and with ability to set #tags to improve searchability... Still use email a lot, but email feels old and not practical.
mtmail 6y ago
My private email inbox consists of 80-90% emails to myself. Unlike my business email inbox I don't want to add another tool/app/website for open tasks. Old habit maybe.
- adawg4 6y ago
  How do you organize them? Have you tried any tools before? What made you give them up if so?
Jugurtha 6y ago
I used to do it before discovering Taskwarrior. See my most recent reply on another thread[0]. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24764078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24764078
the_only_law 6y ago
I don't really do it anymore, but I've done it a few times recently to quickly move links sent to my personal phone to my work PC.
kazinator 6y ago
I sometimes e-mail myself and leave the item in draft form. Combined with webmail, this can be used to transfer files into or out of situations when you have nothing but internet access, and don't want to use a third-party service. It's also useful for keeping certain kinds of important information, which is then easily accessible anywhere via webmail. By keeping the items in draft form, and not actually sending them to myself, I can edit them as much as I want, replacing their content and attachments, without any clumsy re-send workflow. I'm already logging into e-mail, so using that is simpler than using e-mail, plus some other, separate, online service. On-line storage services have complicated UI, that support sharing workflows and whatnot that are completely irrelevant to this use case. I run the mail server myself, so the data "stays at home". It's on RAID and backed up more regularly than some of my other storage locations, which is a good reason to park certain information there.
vinhnx 6y ago
I use iOS' Shortcuts to create a email-to-self recipe. Whenever I find anything that I need to read later, I email email myself, so that in the weekend hopefully I can catch them up. So, basically, email (and also Calendar) is my todo list.
2rsf 6y ago
Occasionally, usually late night reminders of things I just realized or thought of.
cafard 6y ago
Hardly at all, except from automated jobs where I want to know that something ran.
suramya_tomar 6y ago
I use it fairly often to mail myself links to websites that I want to explore in more detail or text that I want to save. I could use an online service for it but most of the time I find these sites while at work and online storage sites are usually blocked for us. But email is open and allows me to send data to my personal account to be explored later when I have time.

6 points by adawg4 6y ago

ddon 6y ago

Used to email myself a lot, but now sending Telegram messages to myself. Nothing beats ability to send text, images, videos and audio messages, and with ability to set #tags to improve searchability... Still use email a lot, but email feels old and not practical.

mtmail 6y ago

My private email inbox consists of 80-90% emails to myself. Unlike my business email inbox I don't want to add another tool/app/website for open tasks. Old habit maybe.

adawg4 6y ago
How do you organize them? Have you tried any tools before? What made you give them up if so?

Jugurtha 6y ago

I used to do it before discovering Taskwarrior. See my most recent reply on another thread[0]. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24764078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24764078

the_only_law 6y ago

I don't really do it anymore, but I've done it a few times recently to quickly move links sent to my personal phone to my work PC.

kazinator 6y ago

I sometimes e-mail myself and leave the item in draft form. Combined with webmail, this can be used to transfer files into or out of situations when you have nothing but internet access, and don't want to use a third-party service. It's also useful for keeping certain kinds of important information, which is then easily accessible anywhere via webmail. By keeping the items in draft form, and not actually sending them to myself, I can edit them as much as I want, replacing their content and attachments, without any clumsy re-send workflow. I'm already logging into e-mail, so using that is simpler than using e-mail, plus some other, separate, online service. On-line storage services have complicated UI, that support sharing workflows and whatnot that are completely irrelevant to this use case. I run the mail server myself, so the data "stays at home". It's on RAID and backed up more regularly than some of my other storage locations, which is a good reason to park certain information there.

vinhnx 6y ago

I use iOS' Shortcuts to create a email-to-self recipe. Whenever I find anything that I need to read later, I email email myself, so that in the weekend hopefully I can catch them up. So, basically, email (and also Calendar) is my todo list.

2rsf 6y ago

Occasionally, usually late night reminders of things I just realized or thought of.

cafard 6y ago

Hardly at all, except from automated jobs where I want to know that something ran.

suramya_tomar 6y ago

I use it fairly often to mail myself links to websites that I want to explore in more detail or text that I want to save. I could use an online service for it but most of the time I find these sites while at work and online storage sites are usually blocked for us. But email is open and allows me to send data to my personal account to be explored later when I have time.