Email sucks. Time saving tips from Kevin Rose

http://kevinrose.com/blogg/2010/8/17/email-sucks-5-time-saving-tips.html

by bjonathan • 16 years ago

127 59 16 years ago

pxlpshr• 16 years ago

Tip 6. Stop routing a ton of noise into your primary email accounts, use something like OtherInbox.com for trivial stuff such as Twitter and Facebook notifications.

philwelch• 16 years ago

I just don't let any of that crap get into my email, personally. Facebook, Twitter, and other low-priority sites I check on a case-by-case pull basis--I don't need to be notified if something happens on those sites, because if it's really important the person can email me themselves and if it isn't important it can wait until I have time to waste.

dododo• 16 years ago

correction to tip #2: the plus trick (username+foo@example.org) works with many mail systems not just gmail (as stated). its origins predate gmail.

correction to tip #4: iPhone's append "Sent from my iPhone" not "Sent from iPhone". i'd notice the missing "my". "Sent from my mobile." is just fine and probably a better approach.

greyboy• 16 years ago

> correction to tip #2: the plus trick (username+foo@example.org) works with many mail systems not just gmail (as stated). its origins predate gmail.

Obligatory note: this doesn't work with all signup forms, unfortunately.

someone_here• 16 years ago

In some email systems like postfix, you can change what the + character is (like . or _ or even numbers) So you could have username_football@example.com

dlsspy• 16 years ago

I created an email address a long time ago that was something like readrfc822@ just for these sites.

Anyone who validates email addresses by doing anything other than sending you an email is doing it wrong.

icey• 16 years ago

gmail allows you to put periods anywhere in your email address, so you can use that as a fallback. If a site's email validator pukes on youremail+mightbespam@gmail.com, you can use youremai.l@gmail.com or y.o.u.r.e.m.a.il@gmail.com or whatever combination you want to use.

PStamatiou• 16 years ago

I've been doing the iPhone sig on my primary email for 2 years now - oddly enough I think I heard Kevin say it some other time and I picked it up then.

protomyth• 16 years ago

So, how long till spammers remove the + and following characters or strip all the . out of a gmail address?

ams6110• 16 years ago

If you're concerned, use a "+" suffixed address as your "main" address and consider email to your "bare" address to be spam too. Though this might be difficult if your "bare" address is already well-established with a lot of your contacts.

pyre• 16 years ago

The '+' addresses just allow you to trace the who spilled the beans about your email address. Chances are that if NewEgg.com sells an email list to a spammer (or their customer database is hacked), that the spammer won't give two shits about stripping out the '+' part of the email addresses. It's no skin off the spammer's back if you now know that NewEgg.com leaked your email.

AndyKelley2• 16 years ago

I don't like the iPhone signature. It's blatantly dishonest.

joshu• 16 years ago

heh, #4 is from me.

theycallmemorty• 16 years ago

GMail users: If you find a site that doesn't like the + character, you can also use strategically placed periods to help direct spam. myemail@gmail.com and m.y.email@gmail.com are all routed to the same account. Just create rules based on the address you give to friends and the one you give to potential spammers.

avar• 16 years ago

I liberally sprinkle my address everywhere (here it is again, spammers: avarab@gmail.com) and I don't have a spam problem. I get at most 2-4 messages per week that make it through GMail's spam filters.

Those are all glaringly obvious spam though, to the point that I've begun suspecting that they're just using me to confirm that suspected spam really is spam.

kalid• 16 years ago

I agree -- I rarely (few times per week) receive spam to my main inbox.

I used to obfuscate my email address, but realized it doesn't matter. Spammers will get at you no matter what (unused email addresses get spam), and obfuscation just annoys people who would like to contact you. I let GMail do its job.

inferno0069• 16 years ago

I occasionally have ham messages caught in Gmail's spam filter. The fewer spam messages I receive, the fewer I have to skim through.

abraham• 16 years ago

You can also use name@googlemail.com.

bitdiddle• 16 years ago

The best way to reduce the amount of email you get is to reduce the amount you send. Works like a charm.

andylenz• 16 years ago

+1!

roc2• 16 years ago

If you get that much email you have issues larger than what you do with those thousand emails. The root problem is that you got a thousand emails. Address that.

e.g. Instead of address+foo@domain.tld - try not signing up for shady lists in the first place. Has anything of value come out of a newsletter from a dicey web site?

jacquesm• 16 years ago

Your comment might be on topic if it wasn't for who the writer of the article is. It's not unlikely that simply by being himself and having an email address he's going to receive that thousand emails and there is no easy way to address that short of changing identity or to stop using email altogether.

Shady lists probably are not his main problem.

roc2• 16 years ago

And people in that unique situation should hire assistants.

dotBen2• 16 years ago

The biggest issue is you have to work out how important email is to what you do + achieve. If you are a developer, it's probably a distraction.

If you are a founder, entrepreneur or similar then your (filtered, non-spam, non-bacn) email is contextual to your business relationships and actually prioritizing your time to properly tend to it is important.

This whole "I have over 1000 unread emails, oh my!" crap just feels like bad email management and poor time keeping.

I filter away all twitter/facebook/plancast auto-notifications, intentionally avoid mailing lists unless there is an RSS option and keep very on top of spam using similar email address tricks (I tend to use <foo>@<mydomain> but it's the same deal).

So with the Spam and Bacn taken care of, I actually am left with a very manageable amount of ham ('real') email every day and so I set aside the appropriate amount of time to deal with it because it is all high-value messages.

Things work out fine, relationships are founded/maintained and I don't have to email people automatically telling them I couldn't be bothered to read their email in 14 days - which would make them look unimportant and me look like a bit of a douche.

user24• 16 years ago

poor time keeping? From the man who invented digg? ;) sorry for the flipancy but I couldn't resist.

webwright• 16 years ago

"This whole "I have over 1000 unread emails, oh my!" crap just feels like bad email management and poor time keeping."

I'd wager he gets hundreds of emails per day from random people, some of whom could actually be important. This is in addition to internal email lists at his company, VIPs, etc. I get dozens and I'm quite a bit less public/important than Kevin Rose.

Say he gets the following daily:

30 messages from people he knows 150 emails from fans, strangers, some of whom might be worth responding to 50 internal company emails that merit SOME attention

That's 220 emails per day to process. Say 150ish on the weekends, so he has 300+ to process every morning. Now say he takes a 1 week vacation.

Call it an average of 1 minute per email for processing (some are near 0, some need to be scanned, some need to be carefully read, some require short replies, some require longer replies). That's 4+ hours per day.

What he needs is an assistant to go thru the "I don't know you" pile to see if there is any "ham".

dotBen2• 16 years ago

So this wasn't specifically aimed at Kevin - I know Kevin and he's very much the man in demenad. And anything but a douche.

I was more talking from the perspective of 'regular folk' implementing his methods into their own work-stream. What is appropriate for him is not appropriate for the majority.

I know a number of 'normal' folks who also have the "1000+ unread emails in my inbox" issue who are not a Kevin Rose/Scoble/etc... I don't see their excuse.

dtby• 16 years ago

some of whom

I hope you meant some of which.

gcv• 16 years ago

Curious: how many of those thousands of messages are actually personal and worth reading? How many are notifications from stores, social sites, and so on? (Programmers only:) How many are notifications from your apps, giving you updates about processes you're running?

I find it incredibly hard to understand how anyone could have a thousand personal worthwhile messages coming in every day. I guess an Internet celebrity (or famous angel investor!) would have a large number of contact attempts each day, but that counts as work email, right? (The author's post says "1002 unread personal".)

ojbyrne• 16 years ago

Doesn't say "per day."

chmike3• 16 years ago

This is also what I would like to know. How many are spams, automatic notifications, "cold calls" and undesirable personnal sollicitations, mail sent to him to be in the loop but which are not really relevant to him, etc.

Regarding your second point, I do think it is possible to have many hundred mails per day of personnal sollicitations which I would call legitimate mails.

When most people cross the street no one cares and they can move freely. If it is a well known person, like a star, many people will try to talk to him, ask for something, or whatever to the point they can't move or even become in danger. So it is possible that some people become overdrawn by legitimate mails. But this is quite exceptional and concluding from this that "mail sucks" is not very fair.

It sucks and in many ways, but not because of that type of situation.

jakevoytko• 16 years ago

All of these tips are generalizations of the same idea: with email, nobody grabs your attention without your consent. This is a new idea in society - you could always get someone's attention by finding them in person, and you could usually reach someone on the telephone. Call screeners and security guards are expensive, so only a few people had them. But now, I can just open up my GMail preferences and have my mail prioritized, flagged, tagged, deleted, and archived without lifting a finger. And malevolent emails are filtered out by someone else! At the end of the day, effectively dealing with email is like programming - when something sucks, automate it.

crux_2• 16 years ago

I used to have two places to check for all of that semi-automated "I'd like to read this but it isn't urgent" material: my email inbox (mailing lists, newsletters, etc) and my RSS reader.

The fix -- a quick'n'dirty script that moves all those emails over to RSS: http://github.com/danshoutis/mail-to-rss

Caveat: if you're using Google Reader, you need to put the output RSS+HTML into a non-password-protected place, which means someone who can guess the URL can read your stuff. (For maximum convenience, I'm just dumping it into the public folder of my dropbox account.)

It certainly needs polishing, but not so much that I've felt the need to work on it recently. :)

mike-cardwell3• 16 years ago

Seems more sensible to me to filter mailing list mail into its own mail folder than filtering it into an rss feed. At least when it's in a mail folder you can reply to it without messing about...

crux_2• 16 years ago

It does get filtered into its own folder; it's just that I prefer to read that folder's contents in Google Reader, along with all my other "feed" stuff, in one shot.

This is more appropriate if you mostly lurk on mailing lists; if there was a list I was highly active on, I'd probably treat it differently.

qjz• 16 years ago

I can think of three tips that are more useful than any of the ones in the article:

1. Don't subscribe to mailing lists. Really, don't.

2. Answer yes or no questions with a yes or a no.

3. Don't reply if the email doesn't require (or warrant) a response.

Splines• 16 years ago

This is what I do for my work email:

1. I create rules for every Exchange DL that I consider important. This is the first line of defense.

2. Any email that I receive that I am not in the to or cc line is sent to a "Check Later" email folder. Either someone bcc'd me, or someone (maybe me) adding me to a DL that I didn't create a rule for.

3. My Inbox should contain only mail that is directly to me.

4. Any mail in my Inbox that is not actionable (either I'm done with it or it's informational) is filed away.

Of course, these strategies only work for certain people (I'm just a cog in a machine), but it has done wonders for keeping my Inbox manageable. I rely heavily on Outlook Search to find mails that I remember seeing but have filed away (I have a single "I've read these mails and want to keep them" folder).

adavies42• 16 years ago

i've been "inbox zero" since i was introduced to email (c. 1994, on my dad's university vms account). my inbox contains only messages requiring some action (either reply or something external). everything else goes into the trash ("bacn", e.g. update notices for software i don't use anymore, bank newsletters, etc.) or into a folder (or is just "archived" in the case of gmail). i really don't understand why so many people have so much trouble coping with their email. i used to spot english majors by their enormous inboxes when i was in college....

JacobAldridge• 16 years ago

I have a similar policy, and a saying that 'as goes my Inbox so too goes my mind'. Using it, as I do, as a de facto 'to do' list isn't best practice, but it works for me. When I have <30 messages, I know I'm on top of things.

Currently have 92. Must. Leave. HN.

muppetman• 16 years ago

I use the X1 search program to make my life a lot easier. At my office we have to use Outlook, X1 makes using email like having your own local copy of Gmail.

Doesn't really help with huge volumes of email, but it does help when you have to find that email you were sent last week along with 7000 other emails.

threnody• 16 years ago

I don't read tiny white text on black backgrounds. I don't care who wrote it, or what it purports to say. Period.

AndyKelley2• 16 years ago

I think the design is gentle on the eyes. The dark is relaxing and then the gray text contrasts so that you can see it clearly, at the same time not contrasting too much as to blind you.

callahad• 16 years ago

Then may I suggest the Readability bookmarklet from Arc90? It's available at http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

Or you could use Safari 5, which has it built in.

Aesthetics are a terrible grounds upon which to dismiss textual information.

omaranto• 16 years ago

You're right about aesthetics being terrible, shallow grounds for dismissal but there is one instance I can't bring myself to be sensible about: old math books that are typewritten with hand-written formulas. I've managed to read papers that are like but so far refuse to read entire books...

jodrellblank• 16 years ago

One thing I've been wanting to mention at HN but don't think is worth starting a thread for is how bad email is for task / project management, and how much I think there's room for an alternative.

My running dream is that it would be web based (but not a todo list) and would be based on the idea of a project built of tasks with definite finishing points, and subprojects, and the ability to direct other people to them and ask/answer questions, make notes, verify things and confirm tasks are complete.

I picture it in my head as Etherpad meets old-school vertical scrolling 2D games meets Gantt charts meets braiding ( http://theautry.org/ortega/images/four_string_braid.jpg ), I guess meets Google Wave though I've never used it.

The braids go to other people "request input from Alice, then verification from Bob, then back to me for implementation", and as the "view" scrolls, the completed tasks are fixed in time and cannot be altered, but can be brought back up to the front for reattention.

I put it here so I can note it somewhere and because it's related to how annoying email is to use for ongoing work between people. I'm suspicious that it's impractical if delved into in any depth, and that the good bits are done in some existing tracker / helpdesk / ticket / project management software if I knew how to look for that kind of thing.

TeHCrAzY• 16 years ago

Team Foundation Server from MS could achieve this I reckon (might need a bit of work to get it exactly how you want).

Or possibly even (I hate to say it) sharepoint.

awin• 16 years ago

Why not create a mail with a 250 character limit. Or forget the limits, something like the facebook stream, but a lot more private just like email. Not sure if such a service exists today..something like a Short Message Service implemented with email protocols.

qthrul• 16 years ago

At the risk of double entry...

Regarding 3) VIP filter -- That's how I'm currently using AwayFind [1] with my GMail in Google Apps. My most frequent VIP filter is {if they reply today} but for some people I'll do {if they reply this week} and I get a phone call and it's read back to me. The context and timing is the important thing for me. The really powerful feature is specific words (optional) but I'm presently inclined to rely on my own reply behavior to set the tone of my perceived inbox. It's pretty addicting.

[1] #include 'disclaimer.h' /* I'm an advisor */

Groxx2• 16 years ago

I've been noodling with an idea for a while, and maybe this is a good time to see people's responses:

We have Spam filters. Why not Content filters? (ok, a ham strainer)

I want unlimited, user-defined bayesian filters for my email. Flag everything political-sounding, and have it (reasonably accurately) filtered - no more FUD chain letters in your main inbox! Flag anything funny - get a humor folder. Flag everything that's a bug report - get a bug report folder. Ultimately, you have an auto-sorting tagging system defined by your needs.

I'm primarily thinking it'd work for people with high-to-very-high email volume, as then the filters would have enough to learn from. But even if it's somewhat inaccurate, pre-sorted mail would be extremely useful to me - you just have to correct it occasionally, instead of correcting it every time.

---------

More on-topic, the single-most-useful thing I've done to manage my inbox has been to make a "this week" query-based folder. Far fewer things fall out of my attention that way, because it's a reasonable amount to scroll over if I've got a bit of time - something I never did when I had 3k+ in the same view.

jgrahamc• 16 years ago

See http://blog.jgc.org/2010/08/solving-kevin-roses-email-proble...

Groxx2• 16 years ago

Oooh, I'll have to look into that, thanks.

I'm personally planning on developing my own at some point ("learning" programs fascinate me), but that might fit the bill in the meantime (probably a few years...).

newchimedes• 16 years ago

Wasn't a big fan of this post. it would have been more interesting if he showed some examples of his three sentence replies to actual emails. 3 sentence emails sound great in theory, but really after a while if you are sending such short responses you are just an email mass producing factory.

I've been on the receiving end of some short/terse emails and I have to say that my impression is not positive. I understand people are busy, but when I read short replies to emails that don't make sense it doesn't make me feel special at all :(

dalore• 16 years ago

Rather then put a +spam on the end I give a unique email out to every place that asks for it. Then I filter on that "To" address with labels. Makes it easy to scan.

Then I follow GTD of having an empty email box.

Tichy• 16 years ago

I do that too - the downside is that it actually multiplies the spam, because my address will be in the spammers lists multiple times.

Email sucks. Time saving tips from Kevin Rose

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