For two weeks now I’ve been experimenting with my Gmail filters to get a trueer handle on my email. The quick run down for anyone who missed the original post is that I turned off all of the auto-archive filters so that I had to manually deal with my email. After two weeks here’s what I’ve found:
- Other than mailing lists this would be an easy practice to follow 100% of the time. Most of my email requires very little actual effort to skim, tag and archive. Even if I go a whole day without checking my email its only a small pain in the ass the next time I do check my email. Because I’m constantly on my mail browsers while at work, its not usually an issue
- GMail’s spam filter is awesome. This isn’t news, but wow does it save me headaches.
- Most of my mailing lists are more noise than signal. I’ve unsubscribed from mailing lists that I realized I wasn’t getting any value from. I would likely have kept them coming to waste my time other than this.
I expect to tweak this a bit and have some of the mailing lists auto archived just to delay my need to filter them, but this experiment has worked out well for my needs. I’ve not missed any important or moderately important email in the last two weeks and don’t feel any more stressed about getting to inbox zero than I did before.
More from Conrey
- Experimenting with Gmail Filters
- The First and Only Rule of Social Media for Salesmen
- Doing things Differently
- Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is
- Credit Where Due
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- Save Time And Stay Current With A Feed Reader (Tomas Carrillo)
- I wouldn’t read my blog. (Brian Shaler)
- The Difference between Selling and Solving (The Sales Cooke)
What a tough decision… both ways seem to be tough, whether it’s an “Auto-archive” or read them all then send them on their way something is lost. Auto-archive and you pass on a very needed email and read every one and you become imprisoned by your inbox and allow others to control your time. Maybe I should hire someone to go through all my email and pass it on how it needs… now to just figure out how to pay them!
Nice wrap up Conrey. I think the lesson about unnecessary mailing lists is especially good.
After two weeks of my Gmail Experiment, I’m giving you the results: http://is.gd/gEcp
Interesting post by @conrey on turning off all the autofilters in his gmail for two weeks. http://bit.ly/TVKA