Sometimes I just can believe how people are getting stuck in their comfort zone. In this case, using folders as THE way of organizing email. I was 100% sure that this debate was over now, that folders (and trees of these) were bad, one of these evil creation of software people.
Coincidentally, I have a draft blog post which is totally the opposite of this guy's perspective. There is no way I could have been more effective at dealing with my Inbox content when I came back from vacation than through the Gmail client. (note that I have not tried Yahoo recently - last news was that this was simply another Outlook on the web)
His discussion on the whole unmanageable Inbox made me laugh too! Effective handling of incomming emails can be imroved through the use a powerful email client but most importantly I believe it is process thing. Looks like he did not buy into the Zero inbox concept I am referring to here.
I need to publish this "Back From Vacation" blog post...
Monday 25 August 2008
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5 comments:
I'm one of those who still don't buy into the "zero inbox" mentality. In my email client (a combination of Thunderbird and Gmail via IMAP) I have filter rules which move emails into folders according to project, sender, mailing-list, etc... Usually discussions will "flow" in these folders. If I need to search for something, search is always there.
The cool thing here is that there is nothing wrong with this... ;-) until your inbox (or the dozens of folders) become overwhelming and that you are wasting more time digging through them than you really should.
The zero inbox thing helped me at being more efficient with all the incoming requests... Allowing me to use my email "DB" more as a knowledge base than a structured repository of action items... I believe this is what the Zero Inbox is ultimately about.
Before I switched to Gmail, I was a big fan of the folder based approach and couldn't really see how I would do my work without it. I had about 30 different rules that were automatically managing my emails and putting them into different folders based on projects, mailing list, sender, etc...
Now that I use Gmail, with its search, labeling and archiving features and that I aim for the Zero Inbox, I have to say that I don't know how I did my work before.
The main problem I had with the folder based approach is that I missed quite a few emails because they were automatically hidden in their folders. Especially the ones sent to mailing lists. I had folders with 200+ unread emails and everything ending in those folders were automatically forgotten.
With the Zero Inbox approach, I have to say that I am able to process more emails in less time and I feel like I am much more efficient and I miss less actions from emails (especially with my TODO list, RTM, hooked to Gmail).
Personally I use both folders and zero based inbox.
Mailing lists go to folders, all of these folders are in the "Favourites" part of Outlook.
All other mail goes straight to my inbox for processing. From my inbox it goes into a folder based on the person's name. Anything that has to be actioned is dragged from my inbox onto the action item/calendar/note tab in Outlook that automatically creates the action item/calendar/note.
As much as I understand the internal need of keeping things clean and organized (required by the folder structure) I am clearly in Francois's clan on this front.
Retrieving folder "X" in Gmail is only a matter of searching for "label:X".
I too use folders for mailing list, but I have to admit that if I am making these skip the inbox (which is the case) I have to be careful and check them otherwise I may be missing action items for me in there.
I suppose mailing lists are a special kind of emails... I.e. you do not always have to be directly involved.
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