798: The Email Overwhelm Problem

I’ve actually used Todoist for almost 10 years, but last year I switched over to Apple Reminders. One year in… and yeah, I really miss Todoist.

Reminders works great for quick stuff, and I love how easy it is to dictate tasks using Siri, I use that a ton and love it!

And since Gmail has that nice Todoist plug-in that lets you turn emails into tasks super easily… this Gmail move might also trigger a switch back to Todoist. Time to rethink my task setup too, I guess :sweat_smile:

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Google has made a few changes to Tasks in the last year or so. It now has a Kanban view and Gemini integration. It might be worth a look since you use Gmail in the browser.

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I had an old maintenance account hanging around for SmallCubed, and used it to try out Mail Maven (public beta) today. It was probably the fastest uninstall and delete of an app I’ve ever trialed. The interface is ugly, clunky, terrible weird purple icons, and responsiveness is horrible. I thought I’d fallen into a wayback machine to the 1990s. It might get better, but I decided not to wait around and see what happens next.

Katie

Katie

As much as I hesitate to give @MacSparky any new apps to look at…

Given your praise for the keyboard-focused navigation of SuperHuman, I’m curious if you’ve looked at Godspeed for tasks yet. Same (wonderful) concept.

I switched away from 2Do early this year since it’s no longer being developed and had a few nagging issues. I thought I was switching to Reminders, but that failed and sent me on the hunt again. Since Godspeed was included with SetApp, I thought I’d give it a try.

It’s incredible. Keyboard shortcuts (intuitive, easily discoverable, customizable) for everything. It’s so well thought out. Like you with SuperHuman, I’ve only been on it for a few weeks now but I think I’m convinced.

Yup. I even covered it in the Labs. Very nice app and very active developers.

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Have you found a way to act on multiple items at once? (e.g. moving multiple lists into a folder, moving multiple tasks into a list)? That was something it seemed like you had to do one at a time.

When I use shift+up and shift+down I can multi select and drag those items into a new list.

Give me some other potential scenarios and I’m happy to try.

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I see that it works with tasks. But there doesn’t seem to be a way to multi-select lists to put them into a folder. Found a way to do that?

(Also, at risk of getting too far off topic, have you found a way to have sub-tasks repeat on the same schedule as their parent task without having to individually assign or change the repeat for each of the sub-tasks?—I can’t see any way to do that)

Ahh, I’m useless on these requests.

I don’t think that can be done. I can make a request in the Slack (they’re very responsive) but this feels like such an infrequent need I don’t think it would get prioritized.

I haven’t attempted to use sub-tasks yet at all. I’ll try that next week, but I also expect you’re right that the feature doesn’t exist yet. This one I see being more likely to be prioritized in development, but that’s just my 2 cents.

Thanks (and sorry for hijacking the thread temporarily—Godspeed is interesting, but I’m finding too many cases where Things just works better for my needs)

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Enjoyed this episode. Superhuman prompt labeling/auto-archiving is an intriguing feature.

With Hey, I think everything can be keyboard driven. The snoozing keystrokes are way less efficient, though. If you aren’t wanting one of the presets, it’s z, down six times, then typing the date and hitting enter. I rarely snooze these days but I used to be addicted to it, so I get the value of speed.

Sending as much as possible to the Paper Trail is really the best move; just hit 3, verify nothing needs to be actually opened, done.

If it’s in the inbox, hit Power Through New, then hit (typically) e for most of them, r if you have a quick reply, or l if you want to write more later.

If you have a bunch of built up reply laters, hit 4 and just go down the list writing responses and hitting cmd+enter to move to the next one.

Hey’s kind of built around the idea that you shouldn’t stay on top of your inbox, though. Even for work purposes, it’s a chill place and it encourages you to wait to reply until you have less to say.

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O my god…

My wife is away with my daughter to the zoo and what do I do to spend my day?
Cleaning up my Mac, my pasword manager and somehow I just managed to add my Gmail to my Mail app.

And I really, really don’t like it.
So I will be looking to the episode again to get a clear view of what I want.
Just easy, clean, color coded and filter options with a few rules…

I’m curious what you don’t like about it. I have three Gmail accounts in the Apple Mail app. I’ve never found it to be a problem. What is it that you do not like? My question is genuine; I’m curious.

This is, to be clear, posted in the heat of the moment. But now it has started to download all my e-mails and I don’t want that… But okay, I can see it as a chance to clear my mails and to make it more productive. I don’t need mails that I have send 5 years a go…

But I never liked the UI of Mail, so adding more mailboxes to my mail app just wasn’t an option.

So you, @Bmosbacker, can manage, label and automate in your Mail app? I would love to learn! Because my wife doesn’t understand that I don’t get all the mails… But it’s maybe because my bad e-mail hygiene.

I manage my emails using a combination of filters (also known as Smart Mailboxes) on my Mac and in iCloud and Gmail filters on the web. These filters automatically sort my incoming messages.

I then utilize the Favorites bar in Apple Mail. This setup allows new messages matching my filter criteria to appear directly in the Favorites bar as unread, giving me quick visibility. Additionally, I configure these filtered mailboxes to display only unread messages, streamlining my view.

Aside from these filtering rules, I don’t use any other automation. I also don’t use labels; instead, I rely on Mail’s search function to quickly locate any messages not readily visible in my Favorites mailboxes.

One of my filters

The Favorites Bar

Showing Gmail Accounts

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You can avoid that by creating a different archive “folder” using the Gmail server settings using webmail then selecting your new archive “folder” in Mail.app. Then hide the existing All Mail “folder” by unclicking show in imap on the server Screenshot 2025-06-01 at 9.44.39 AM

You can include any existing emails by adding them to the same label as your new archive.

I rarely use email on my Mac so I use server side rules to organize my email so only those messages that need my immediate attention arrive in my Inbox. On whatever device I am using.

For example most routine emails, and many unsolicited ones, contain the required link to allow you to unsubscribe from future messages. I have a rule that automatically files all of these so I can look at them later.

A similar rule that filters on specific email addresses does the same to approximately 60 senders. That rule was created over several months by adding new addresses as they were received:

address1 OR address2 OR . . .

You guy’s are the best! :heart_eyes:

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