Interesting Experience Quitting Sanebox

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Hi all,

I recently tried Superhuman as an email program (it’s neat in a lot of ways but I have found myself back to Mail/MailButler/KM). I disabled Sanebox to allow Superhuman’s filters a go. Since I was nearing the expiration of Sanebox, I decided to keep it deactivated when I returned to Mail and see how it went.

I’ve found that while I get a lot more mail in my inbox, it doesn’t take very long to process it and it’s really nice to only have one inbox. I didn’t realize the burden of having to check/manage/empty several inboxes all the time. I feel relieved when I know I’m seeing the complete picture and there aren’t messages lurking in other corners.

I may change my mind after a while, but it was a surprising experience and I wanted to share.

Beck

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Yep some people well known to us have missed business opportunities because they never replied to emails from me or my clients. Or found it weeks to late after they finally saw the email.

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This is the reason I never went beyond a trial of Sanebox, it made me feel out of control rather than in control.

Triaging doesn’t take that long for me, and a single inbox means that I’m confident that I understand my commitments.

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Are there any other alternatives that you have tried?

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Just wondering what volume of email I day do you have to justify Sanebox?

I could kind of see its use when I was at 200 emails a day a few years back, now I’m more in the 50 zone and can obviously manage quite easily.

In fact with such low volume (50) when I tried Sanebox it was more of a nuisance rather than a solution.

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I’ve never felt the need. If something is a firehose I either unsubscribe or filter those emails into a separate periodicals folder which I check on a Friday.

Everything else gets handled once a day when I check my inbox.

For me (and this is only my opinion) Sanebox is for people who either decide to take no control over their inbox or are “public” people who get lots of unsolicited email, and i don’t see how Sanebox helps with the latter.

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Even with 200 emails a day, if you check it once a day.

  • Pass 1, get rid of the rubbish
  • Pass 2, do everything which needs a quick reply
  • Pass 3, anything left gets scheduled.

If pass 1 doesn’t get rid of at least 50% then you need an assistant rather than Sanebox

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I had the same feeling when testing HEY… too many buckets to check. rather check one big bucket than check many smaller ones

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Oh! :face_with_hand_over_mouth: I should share that I’m back with Sanebox. I shared more about it on My thoughts on Hey.com after using it for five months (though @MereCivilian makes a good point about Hey, and which is a fair critique of my use of it now).

Would love to do this, but haven’t ever found a way. I do use Sane’s “Do Not Disturb” feature to limit my checking between 6am-6pm.

Edit: Fixed typo/wording

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@beck

This may help you (or force you) to check your email less:

It also has a version of Hey’s Screener called the Daily digest.

Works with Gmail only

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My thoughts on the emails issue in a prior post:

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With 200 a day (work emails) the only way that worked for me was to triage multiple times a day. Any dead time in the day, especially in between or when moving between a meeting and the other is for that and phone calls - about 50% is work to be delegated and it can’t wait until one checks email once a day.
But you know, different jobs different needs - nowadays with low volumes I am good with twice, thrice a day - and alerts for VIPs.

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Agreed. But IMHO it something is that urgent someone should be picking up the phone, not emailing.

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