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Discussion on: Inbox Zero: How To Keep A Clean Email Inbox (And Mind)

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kayis profile image
K

I'm doing zero inbox for almost ten years now, and people always envy me for having such a clean inbox.

Googlemail has excellent features for this. I have filters for newsletters, freelancer project emails, for every customer one. They get tagged and archived right away.

There is also a setting to change the "Reply" button to "Reply&Archive".

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florimondmanca profile image
Florimond Manca

Interesting — so your emails are automatically archived as soon as they get in your inbox? How do you manage read vs. unread emails?

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kayis profile image
K

Gmail displays tags like folders/categories in the sidebar. A mail can be archived but unread and every tag in the sidebar shows how many mails with that tag are unread.

Gmail list all mails, even the archived ones, when I click on a tag in the sidebar. So it's basically like having many sorted inoxes. Only mails from unknown sources land in the "real" inbox.

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phlash profile image
Phil Ashby

Almost the same here, but with Outlook @ work and Thunderbird @ home, both of which are happy to apply rules, show me counts in folders and keep my inbox clear for oddities.

I subscribe to a number of mailing lists, these are easy rules to create and I can fit processing into my day when it suits me.

Some things I drop unread into other folders as one-offs, if the situation repeats itself a few times I build a rule. classic JIT :)

One thing I would add - when there is a thread going on, I tend to keep the last email, and nuke the rest, unless someone has actually edited before replying (unusual).