I don’t understand the angst over email

[DrJJWMac]

@Bmosbacker

As to your offer, this one will do just fine. What time shall I come over?

I’ll set a flag for the times that I am traveling along the I81 to I87 corridor between north Alabama and western Massachusetts if that fits your location. I’ll bring my MBP, the beer, and my iced vodka (still hoping to get real one from Poland … the one allowed now in the US is just not quite right).

Żubrówka

You can tell the story of how you came to the beer and I’ll reminisce about three guys in Poland stripping a pig on a long late night over a Christmas holiday week, each with their own bottle of vodka.

—
JJW

[Rjlindblom]

For work I use Outlook. I have filters set up to sort things out. Usually the rule for sender or subject. It moves it to the appropriate folder. Several are moved to the deleted items. If it is something that requires my attention I will take care of it, then flag it for followup or move it to the folder. I hold on to email for a while before it is deleted. If has an attachment I keep that file usually in One Drive or on the computer itself. This is all Windows 10 world stuff

For stuff not work related. I use Gmail. I unsubscribe to anything that I do not read. For good measure I flag those as junk. However, it seems Google will ignore the rule after a spell. Then it is rinse and repeat. The Gmail stuff is one my iMac, iPad or iPhone.

My policy is to sort and cull. I cull what is not needed. My employer implemented a 2 year email retention policy. After two years the emails are automatically deleted. If you need to keep an email you save it to one drive or into Onenote. I also try to limit the amount of email that makes their way to me.

[ACautionaryTale]

@anon41602260

Work email either gets an immediate response, forwarded to others with a suggested response, scheduled with a team meeting, or ignored – as the case may be. I never use folders (bothersome and waste of energy). Search in Outlook is very robust

This is my approach exactly. I find it to be the least stressful way of dealing with an increasing volume of a decreasingly relevant means of communication (though I’m sure it’ll never be completely irrelevant).

@anon41602260

I also never delete mail out of inboxes. I don’t see the point.

The only point that I know of is that for work email it may be a records retention issue. Information for longer than it’s needed/required can become a liability.

[zkarj]

@margaretamartin

So, my email inbox is partially a task list. There’s simply no way around it. Last year I spent a few months diligently adding these email tasks to my to-dos, but stopped when I realized what a tremendous waste of time that was for most of it. And it’s a task list that will not — and should not — be finished by the end of the day. Some items are handled quickly, some may have to wait until I have time in my schedule, etc. Thus all email messages in my inbox are not equal. It’s maddening, but I’ve yet to find anything better.

Music to my ears. I roll my eyes every time I see a statement that “your email inbox should not be a to-do list.” It should if it works for you.

I use similar techniques at work and at home. At work, only a handful of “not normally useful” emails are filed automatically in folders. Automated stuff mostly, some where the presence of the email alone is information enough. The rest arrive and stay in my inbox. The critical thing about my inbox is emails marked as unread require either my action or my attention. A to-do list is kinda pointless for that latter type of email. Say there is a work restriction due to some crisis, or an announcement of something happening this week that I want to check out. There is simply no way to put these in a to-do list because they are something I need to maintain awareness of over a longish period of time. Given I leave these in my inbox, then leaving to-action emails there as well is obvious. Most don’t have a hard and fast time for action, either. They get done when I can find the time and when they are important enough.

At home, there is little of importance so I use a similar approach. Some stuff gets sent to folders which I check out every so often when I have time. The rest stays in my inbox as unread if I want to get around to reading/actioning. The main difference here is that all read emails get archived. I would do the same at work except people have a tendency to refer back to emails I’ve already dealt with, and sometimes I need to myself, so it’s simpler if I just have to scroll down a little or search if it’s a little older. As work uses M365, accessing the cloud archive is substantially slower than the local cached copy.

The key thing here… is that this is what works for me based on how I use email. What I think the OP is missing is that email is merely a protocol. It’s like saying “I don’t get how people have trouble driving.” Are we talking about a road trip, a congested commute, a local courier, a long distance trucker? All drive to achieve their goals, but how each does it, and the problems they face with roads, other road users, etc is widely different.

[kevin4]

Same here, I don’t get it. From observing others that have issues with email it seems like a combination of low hanging fruit not picked - newsletters and borderline spam going to your main inbox, Facebook notifications for every little thing, combined with no system on dealing with email once, deleting it, and moving on with life.

[FrMichaelFanous]

I am curious about your account workflow (email address) with sign-ups. I am not sure how much damage I would need to undo for myself.

I have a personal gmail email account.
I have 3 emails for my parish (One oversees the whole parish, and 2 are tied to specific projects within the parish.
I have 3 emails for the Diocese (One that is a diocese level, and 2 for specific Diocese projects)

How do you manage personal e-mail account workflow (i.e. family/friends, app sign-ups, subscriptions, etc) You mentioned a junk e-mail address for stuff, so typical scenario…you order from Home Depot, Lowe’s or Amazon (or whatever retailer) The order gets placed and e-mailed to you, but then they email you daily/weekly after that.

[Bmosbacker]

@FrMichaelFanous Good questions. Here is my general email setup and workflow for personal and professional communications.

Personal
I have two personal email accounts, one is a gmail “junk” account. This is the email I give out for all personal commercial transactions, web signups, etc. I never give out my true personal email account, which is an Apple iCloud email. To ensure that I receive the receipts, order status, and similar type of emails I create a gmail filter to forward those emails to my iCloud email address. Because I have done this over many years I seldom find myself needing to create new filters/rules at this point. I may end up doing so perhaps 8 to 10 times per year.

I immediately mark as spam any emails I receive that I consider junk/spam. Between my marking such emails and Google’s and Apple’s good spam filtering I seldom receive spam in my personal or professional inboxes.

Professional
For professional work, I have two email accounts—one for the college where I teach a graduate course and one for work. I follow the same process. I tend to get a lot of marketing emails. When these come in I skim them. If I’m not interested I mark them as spam. Occasionally, I’ll redirect an email to a colleague who may have an interest in it. When I do so, I copy the original sender and ask them to remove my email address.

Finally, I use an email client that has a consolidated inbox so that all unfiltered emails go to that inbox for processing but where I can also look at each account separately as needed. I vacillate between using Apple Mail and Spark.

Finally, I created an email rule for work related “global” emails, for example, “to all employees” or to “xyz association members”, etc. All of these are directed to separate folders. I check those folders once or twice a week for anything relevant. This keeps these “global” emails from showing up in my inbox.

I don’t sign up for many newsletters—I rely instead on blogs and RSS. Consequently, I have few of these to manage.

I don’t know if I’m answering your questions but I hope this is somewhat helpful. I just checked my inbox that consolidates all of my accounts, I have only five emails awaiting me despite the fact that I have 200 employees and 900 parents that I deal with, in additional to the college. This setup is working nicely for me.