Thread: How do you manage your e-mail inbox?

Yesterday I took a look to my mailbox and it said I had 15,000 unread emails. Those weren't all spam mails, most were just confirmations which I don't read, but I don't spend time removing them neither. Anyways, I started removing those unread unnecessary emails yesterday though.

I'm currently at 2100 unread mails. A quick search for 'Happy Birthday' and 'Proxy' made me see that there are many useless emails for that, I removed them all.

I do get 2 emails daily though for InfinitumHost with the latest updates (invoices created, clients, earnings etc.) and I put those in a seperate map. I'm wondering how you people get your inbox clean? It's more difficult than it looks IMO

On a side-note, I've found many emails already with great information that I should keep with scripts, books and much more! It's pretty cewl

What did I do now actually to keep my mailbox more clean:

• Stop subscriptions I didn't read anyways (Like Shoemoney, JustDropped..)
• Remove Happy Birthday wishes from forums
• Remove automatic 'your link has been submitted' emails
• and ofcourse other useless emails I found too.

Please talk about how you keep your inbox clean.

Using Gmail made a huge difference for me. It uses a voting system for spam so it works very well to avoid you having to see emails that you don't expect.

Wow!, you had asked the Million Dollar question, I am in search for solutions to this question too.

I group emails by categories (it doesn't mean I read all of them. There are too much)

I am using "Priority inbox" from google. It helps, but it seams not to solve the problem at all.

~Mike

Another technique is to always create a new forwarding email from your web hosting account for each new submission of your email. Then you can re-direct it anywhere or delete it.

This is what I do.

Originally Posted by Andy101

Another technique is to always create a new forwarding email from your web hosting account for each new submission of your email. Then you can re-direct it anywhere or delete it.

This is what I do.

Hmmm.. I don't completely understand what you're saying here, can you explain any further please?


Thanks for the other responses, looks cool but I'm not the biggest fan of Gmail since I've been using my Hotmail account for 8 years now as far as I can remember

One great thing with Gmail that I love is the Archive feature. I like my Inbox to be clean, so now instead of deleting things I just archive them.

That way, I don't see them but if I need to for whatever reason do a search for them, I can find them!

All my emails get directed to gmail. From there they are left in the inbox as read, starred if they are imported or deleted if not needed. I try not to subscribe to anything.

Also I backup my gmail using Gmail Backup | Safer is better - because I don't trust anyone with data.

You can always declare "Email Bankruptcy" to catch-up! :

Email bankruptcy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I've worked out a system to cope with it.

STEP 1 - Compartmentalize Accounts
I have two businesses that are totally separate, so each has it's own email. Then I have a personal email addy. I use Gmail for two of them, so spam filters there do a lot of work once you set them up well.

The third email is on a biz domain name and is the oldest of the addresses (my RE brokerage), and it gets notably more spam. Partially that's attributable to various assistants that used to sit at my PC in years past. That one requires a bit more weeding.

STEP 2 - Make it easy to get to
Checking three accounts is a pain in the rear if they're on totally separate interfaces. Dowlnoad Mozilla Thunderbird to the computer and set up separate accounts on it for each email you need it to download. Gmail will let you download it as a Pop3. You now have all the accounts on one interface. You can look at each separately, or look at the overall inbox for all of them.

If you have several accounts that do not need to be separate, point them all at one account on thunderbird. Name your accounts in a way that you immediately know which is what.

STEP 3 - Create Folders and USE THEM
You can create folders for storing away emails in Tbird so they are not cluttering the inbox. Dont make it complicated or large... paint with broad strokes. Set up a folder for family, for correspondence from various organizations or groups you're in, for feedback on a blog or something, for password related emails, for technical reference, etc.

Rather than getting rid of stuff like the accounts at Shoemoney or subscriptions to techie newsletters and such... set them up their own folder and set the filter to deposit them there on arrival. They won't clutter the inbox, but will be there when you want to browse them, neatly sorted by date.

HOW to pick Folders? (and set up filters)
While your box is overcrowded... before trying to clean it... sort it by sender. You'll be able to see at a glance what folders you'll need. It will also make getting rid of the spam a snap, and tells you which filters you need to set up. Set the folders up, then while they're sorted by sender, drag and drop 'em as a group.

Gmail allows easy access from wherever I am, but normally I'm on my own laptop. I can still check gmail accounts if I'm away, but having it all converge on my hard-drive via Thunderbird makes it easy to manage and maintain. It allows me to color code emails in different colors for different needs.

They say there's 3 different learning styles...
There's the guy that learns by reading what others have done, the guy that learns by watching others... and the third guy that just has to pee on the electric fence to see for himself.

The setup I use is the result of having done it every wrong way possible in the past. I've used email since they invented it, and trial and error led me to this setup. Give it a shot... beats the heck outta making the same mistakes yourself.

To expand on my technique of using email forwarders.

In cpanel (part of many web hosting accounts), you can add unlimited email forwarders. These redirect an email to anyname@yourdomain.com to somewhere else such as your primary email.

So when subscribing to a list to get access to a download, I set up a forwarding email such as that.site.com@mydomain.com and have it redirect to my main email box. Then, if they send me spam or share the email, I can simply delete the forwarding email. Also, having their site name in the forwarding email identifies the source of the email.