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Here are my shower thoughts on this subject - since I have been bombarded with emails at all times, and been guilty of now having to address them. In my dream

Here are my shower thoughts on this subject - since I have been bombarded with emails at all times, and been guilty of now having to address them. In my dream setup, there are 2 kinds of emails, and the onus is set by the sender of the email. 1) The priority email - in which the sender expects a single person receiver to act on specific aspects, as soon as the receiver is able to. The receiver gets the email asap, and because he receives less emails, he can address it. Like a hot potato, if there is more info he needs, he can pass it around the same way. Everyone else is on cc or bcc - and these folks get it delivered to them as #2 below. This email has only 1 person in the 'To' field, and if there are many, then the system makes it so that everyone in the 'To' field get the email as #2 below. 2) The FYI email - this email is sent by the sender, but is kept in a safe place till the receiver pulls for it. The sender is made aware that the receiver has pulled for it or not, and if the sender is not satisfied with the speed of response, this email can be upgraded into #1. --- I think this does not change too much of the systems, just small tweaks to workflow, and is something that can be achieved if the team puts their mind to it.

Cerium 5y ago
Sounds like JIRA?
- foolinaround 5y ago
  to an extent, yes. However, it still uses the email protocols, etc. The more the underlying system changes, then its harder to replace the system. A lot of what I was suggesting could be implemented as client-side rules? --- The 'priority email' is assigned to a person, and when the task is completed, no one is put in the 'to' and everyone who needs to know is in the 'cc'. Further categories can be created to automatically 'archive' this, and maybe a weekend summary email - showing the completed and WIP ones. --- One of my pet peeves is folks using the same subject line, while changing the purpose of the email, or not using one at all. I am hoping that AI can be used to catch these kind of emails somehow and make the sender improve it.
- sien 5y ago
  In Cal Newport's latest book what he winds up suggesting is pretty much Jira. Which is amusing to anyone who has worked with such systems for 10+ years. Yes they improve things, but well, there are still loads of issues with where old knowledge is and so on. Of course it's in a wiki, the current one, or the old one, or maybe in Sharepoint....
molsongolden 5y ago
Front[1] is for customer-facing teams but functions roughly like this. Teams collaborate on a shared inbox but Rules can route emails so they only show up in one individual’s inbox. With this setup, everyone else can still text or tag search and find the email but it’s only in the inbox of the person it is assigned to. If you are the lead for a given project then you’ll receive the client emails in your inbox but the rest of your team in To: or CC: will not. If you used to be the lead for something, handed it off months ago, and the client continues to include you on emails, you won’t see those emails because they’ll be assigned to the current lead. [1] https://front.com/ https://front.com/ edit: I guess this is still missing the sender intent component. A similar setup to what I mentioned above could be created for a single gmail inbox using rules and folders but the system falls apart without the sender being in on it.
- foolinaround 5y ago
  But this happens on a completely different UX, right... I am thinking of a product that is built on top of existing clients like Outlook etc, and implements a set of rules and prevents emails from going out, explains why it blocks the sending etc.

Cerium 5y ago

Sounds like JIRA?

foolinaround 5y ago
to an extent, yes. However, it still uses the email protocols, etc. The more the underlying system changes, then its harder to replace the system. A lot of what I was suggesting could be implemented as client-side rules? --- The 'priority email' is assigned to a person, and when the task is completed, no one is put in the 'to' and everyone who needs to know is in the 'cc'. Further categories can be created to automatically 'archive' this, and maybe a weekend summary email - showing the completed and WIP ones. --- One of my pet peeves is folks using the same subject line, while changing the purpose of the email, or not using one at all. I am hoping that AI can be used to catch these kind of emails somehow and make the sender improve it.
sien 5y ago
In Cal Newport's latest book what he winds up suggesting is pretty much Jira. Which is amusing to anyone who has worked with such systems for 10+ years. Yes they improve things, but well, there are still loads of issues with where old knowledge is and so on. Of course it's in a wiki, the current one, or the old one, or maybe in Sharepoint....

molsongolden 5y ago

Front[1] is for customer-facing teams but functions roughly like this. Teams collaborate on a shared inbox but Rules can route emails so they only show up in one individual’s inbox. With this setup, everyone else can still text or tag search and find the email but it’s only in the inbox of the person it is assigned to. If you are the lead for a given project then you’ll receive the client emails in your inbox but the rest of your team in To: or CC: will not. If you used to be the lead for something, handed it off months ago, and the client continues to include you on emails, you won’t see those emails because they’ll be assigned to the current lead. [1] https://front.com/ https://front.com/ edit: I guess this is still missing the sender intent component. A similar setup to what I mentioned above could be created for a single gmail inbox using rules and folders but the system falls apart without the sender being in on it.

foolinaround 5y ago
But this happens on a completely different UX, right... I am thinking of a product that is built on top of existing clients like Outlook etc, and implements a set of rules and prevents emails from going out, explains why it blocks the sending etc.