Help - I'm drowning in Gmail

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=859301

by krav • 17 years ago

17 18 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I use Google apps. Have so much work-related emails coming through (founder in startup) from so many sources, am drowning in keeping track, responding, creating to-dos. Have a Mac. Any suggestions, best-practices, or tools? Thanks.

yan• 17 years ago

I have a set of roughly two dozen labels, color coded for groups (i.e. mailing list, financial mail, online services, etc) and a set of filters that redirects all mail to their respective label, skipping the Inbox. I usually filter based on the 'From' field. (Partial screen shot: http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/2189/screenshot20091003at62...)

Enable Gmail shortcuts, learn them and love to use them. Also, enable the 'gl' shortcut in the Labs page again (gl = go label.). They will make your life a lot easier, and I can't stress this enough. E.g., to go to label 'llvm-dev' and mark everything read, I just type: "glvm-d" (it maches on substrings) and then just "*uI" (select unread, mark read).

For to-dos, I use Gmail's Tasks feature (look for it in Labs settings). Shortcut "gk" goes to it and I can quickly add a to-do.

The idea is, only personal email should ever reach your Inbox. And once it does, I usually Archive it as soon as I'm done tending to it. I'm sure there are more things that I don't consciously think about and are muscle memory by now, but those features I find myself unable to live without.

thaumaturgy• 17 years ago

Yes, I second making extensive use of labels and filters. It's hard to do initially, because you feel like you're spending time without immediate payoff, but it's wonderful to have your email sort itself.

Also, I was trying to wrangle my email a bit earlier this week, and discovered that going from 50 message on the front list to 25, and eliminating the multiple inboxes feature, really made my mailbox a lot less intimidating.

CyberFonic2• 17 years ago

I write filters as I find the need for them. Many of them forward to those to whom I have delegated, applies label and marks them as read. Only read and respond to e-mails a couple of times a day. The rest of the time I'm focused on productive work, interruptions better be very important.

I delegate on the basis of "Get ... done, by ..." and manage by exception. I discourage cc'd stuff and unsubscribe from everything that is directly relevant. It is a huge trap to appear important because you are across everything. I ration my time and anyone who abuses it by making disproportionate demands via e-mail, IM or phone is 'tutored' and if that fails, cut loose.

adammichaelc• 17 years ago

Are you a GTD guy?

krav3• 17 years ago

A recovering one.

kakooljay• 17 years ago

Check out The Web Startup Success Guide [http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430219858]. There's a good section on productivity tools & an interview with David Allen [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done]...

rokhayakebe• 17 years ago

Time to get some help. Hire someoone to work 5 hours per week for you. Set up an email for them, and have them answer the low level emails for your company.

krav3• 17 years ago

Thought about that - but hard because when you're suddenly growing, all emails seem high-level :)

CyberFonic2• 17 years ago

That's only an illusion. The more you grow, the more you should delegate and free up your time for the high value issues - I mean that in real money terms.

jlees• 17 years ago

GTD principles and http://lifehacker.com/5321180/turn-gmail-into-your-ultimate-... saved my life.

Plus lots of sensible email filters, of course. (But that's something you gotta figure out for yourself, sadly!)

chris11• 17 years ago

I second the suggestions for using GTD. It really saved me from dealing with school emails the previous year. Now spam isn't allowed, but before students at my university used the email system for basically everything; like finding rides, announcing club events, and selling things. I have over 4800 emails sitting in my trash can going back from September 2007.

And one-touch handling really helped me deal with the flood of emails. After I started doing it regularly, I was usually able to clear out my inbox whenever I logged in. But it also helped that most of it was junk and I could immediately trash.

krav3• 17 years ago

Trying this right now. Setting up filters and multiple-inboxes is an interesting exercise in what my email priorities right now. Just watching the number of emails in my inbox go down is worth it!

Zev• 17 years ago

I'm not much of a GTD person, at least not as far as all the core principles go. I guess I follow them in some way, but I've never read any book or blog post and went and restructured how I'm organized.

What I do:

I personally use Things.app with a dozen or so various "Projects". Each Project in Things is its own areas; a particular class I'm in or something that I'm hacking on.

When something that I need to do for any of these Projects comes up, it goes right into Things. If I'm in class, I'll add it to my iPod and then sync up with my computer later that day. I add an artificial deadline to complete the task, if there isn't a real deadline.

What my roommate does:

My roommmate has another, simpler approach that I like: He just has a giant pad hanging on his door and writes down what he needs to do on there. So he sees it whenever he leaves his room as a reminder.

When he finishes something, it puts a giant X over the item. He doesn't have dates written down, but tries to have everything he has written down finished by the end whatever the time period is when he removed the page.

However, you're not me or my roommate. So, here's some other things to look into: OmniFocus, TheHitList, Anxiety (http://www.anxietyapp.com), TaskPaper (http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper) and a bunch of other very nicely done apps whos name escapes me at the moment to look into, if you want a program to help you manage things. And of course, theres always non-electronic things (datebook, moleskine/generic notebook, post-its, etc) that you could use if it helps you work.

bpourriahi• 17 years ago

GTD is life changing. 1+ for that.

albertsun• 17 years ago

The number one most useful piece of advice to dealing with email has been to respond quickly.

So I read a lot of things on GTD but didn't end up adopting most of them. What I did adopt was their rule that if you can respond to or deal with something in less than X minutes (2? 3? forget the number) then do it immediately.

This made things so much more manageable and has kept my inbox size down tremendously. Before I found that it had filled up with lots of emails that I knew I should respond to or had to do something to follow up on, but just hadn't yet.

floozyspeak• 17 years ago

I hear alot of people saying good things about Things on the mac, haven't played with it in awhile. I use a crap load of filters in GMail to make my life sane, but I too am running into the "how do we keep track of all this stuff" when it comes to biz/app. Just started using Google Sites to at it wiki style. Debating on something like Pivotal Tracker but I dont think we're that organized yet. I hate introducing a tool/process/app that is more work than what problem its trying to resolve.

Deep down, can't beat a good moleskin these days really.

arnorhs• 17 years ago

put all todo-related e-mails in a seperate todo list - don't keep it in e-mail (whatever you use as a todo list) - and then archive that mail... and the rest: deligate..

mackeeeavelli• 17 years ago

Key: Ignore the inbox. Your labels define what is important. I have a label !!!Priority, color red. I've trained myself to focus first on that label. Everything else is secondary.

Help - I'm drowning in Gmail

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