I will soon start a new job where I expect to receive significantly more emails than I do currently. So far, I haven’t had a system in place, except for marking emails as unread until I respond and occasionally using flags.

I would like to change that practice, now that I have a clean slate. But how do I start managing my inbox?

I use Mac Mail and would like to continue using it. I know how to set up rules and create smart mailboxes etc., but I can’t really see the potential.

Thank you!

  • @TomFrost
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    71 year ago

    How to manage your mail comes down to what type of person you are. There’s a lot of great advice here for “Type A” people who don’t find it burdensome to follow a regimen, however simple, and keep things tagged/foldered/scheduled appropriately.

    Type Bs might try that, have it work for a week, fall behind, and naturally let the process die. I’m that person.

    What works for me is only caring about two kinds of messages: unread ones and starred ones. If I read a message and there’s something I need to do because of it, I click star. Instead of using my Inbox as-is, I make my main view a filter that only shows unreads at the top, and starred messages (newest to oldest) below. Messages I read but don’t star immediately disappear. Messages I unstar immediately disappear. Nothing is deleted because I rely heavily on search to give me a refresher about certain topics that came up anywhere from the day before to three years ago.

    I’ve never been an Apple Mail user— my personal and work email accounts are both Gmail, and Mimestream on Mac supports the above workflow really nicely. It’s a native gmail client that uses the gmail API directly, so things like tagging and snoozing work when you need them, and the search isn’t trying to search gigs of messages on your local hard disk.