Now that I finally have my own laptop (after going almost 2 months without my own computer), I have had to deal with the typical issues like re-installing old programs and clearing my e-mail Inbox. Although I used a public computer to check through my e-mails, I still had an Inbox with 600 unread e-mails. I typically like to clear my Inbox and I decided that I’d invest the time now to save myself time later.
When going through my unread e-mails, I noticed a few trends and decided to setup filters in Gmail to better process my incoming e-mail. I quickly noticed that all e-mails basically fall into “auto-generated” and “personal” e-mails. Basically, “personal” e-mails are any e-mail where someone has to manually e-mail you and often the e-mail is intended for just you or at most a few other people. “Auto-generated” e-mails come from websites I have accounts on or groups I’ve signed up for. My ultimate goal was to create an Inbox where I would only get personal e-mails. These are usually the e-mails that require my immediate attention as I prefer to reply fairly quickly to e-mails. Here’s what I came up with:
1) Some websites/groups send me a lot of e-mail that I don’t read often
I found that sites like Staples, Amazon, Uloop, Skydeck, Mint, and others send me frequent updates. I very rarely read those, but sometimes I do and I don’t want to delete them all. So I setup Gmail filters to filter them into a separate folder that I can check infrequently. This way I can search through them at any time or retrieve them if needed at a later date.
2) Some websites/groups send me a lot of e-mail that I read consistently
A few sites like Facebook and Twitter, send out many notifications and I usually will read these. I still don’t want them clogging up my Inbox, as these notifications are not always that important. For sites like these, I setup individual folders that get filtered e-mails. For example, Facebook e-mails all go into a Facebook folder, etc. This also includes all of the school e-mails I get from Penn and Wharton. I want to stay informed of on campus events and school news, but I don’t always need to see this right away.
3) Some websites/groups send me e-mail that I never read
This was the easiest to deal with. I have signed up for websites in the past that I no longer use and listservs that I no longer read. For these, I simply setup auto-delete filters so I will never even see their e-mails. This was my favorite part and it will surely clear a lot of “noise” out of my Inbox.
4) Personal e-mails get lost in the shuffle
These are the most important for me. I noticed more than a few personal e-mails that I had missed or replied slowly too because they were in the middle of a bunch of other e-mails. These e-mails are now the only e-mails that touch my Inbox.
Overall, I spent a few hours setting up all the filters and clearing through my Inbox. In the end I am left with a system that should hold fairly well for the foreseeable future and help me keep my e-mail organized.
June 11, 2009 at 9:46 am |
The trick with sorting personal emails that tends to work pretty well is to create the following filter:
Matches: ((unsubscribe OR subscription OR subscribe))
Do this: Skip Inbox, Apply label “mailing lists”
This tends to work at least 90% of the time.