All posts tagged email

Your email client is not a filing cabinet

by Dave Caolo on August 16, 2011 in Articles with No comments

Today I visited someone with over 1,800 messages in her email inbox. They weren’t unread. The messages were being stored there. It took her 12 minutes to find the message she wanted to show me.

Twelve minutes.

When an email message arrives:

  1. Decide what it is (needs action, is reference material, is trash)
  2. Act accordingly (WRITE DOWN the action, move to cold storage, throw away)
  3. Delete the original message

Re-read item number three, please. The above is a condensed version of this. Again, Entourage is not a filing cabinet. Leaving your messages in email is like leaving your groceries in the paper bags from Stop & Shop.

Sync Yahoo! contacts with your iPad

by Dave Caolo on March 17, 2011 in Articles with No comments

I had a question about this during the class that I’m teaching (Intro to the iPad) and I thought I’d share the answer. It’s easy to sync your Yahoo! mail contacts with an iPad. Here’s how.

  1. Connect your iPad to your computer and launch iTunes
  2. Click the iPad icon on the left-hand side
  3. Click the Info tab
  4. Click Sync Address Book Contacts
  5. Click Sync Yahoo! Address Book Contacts
  6. A new window appears. Enter your Yahoo! username and password, then click OK
  7. Click Apply in the lower right-hand corner of iTunes

Enjoy!

Mail rules [updated]

by Dave Caolo on September 3, 2010 in Links with No comments

Google’s announcement of the new Priority Inbox feature has got people talking about the procedures they use to filter, sort and otherwise act upon their incoming email. I get several hundred email messages per day across several accounts, gigs and points of reference.

I don’t use a single rule. I have one inbox. I treat them all the same way.

When an email message arrives, I ask myself the following:

  1. What is it? Meaning, is it actionable, reference material or junk?
  2. If it’s actionable, I then consider: Can it be completed in 2 minutes or less? If so, I do it RIGHT THEN. If no, it’s either A.) assigned to an open project, a new project or a single-action task as is appropriate; B.) assigned to a context like “@computer”;  C.) delegated to the appropriate person. If delegated, I make a note of the task, person and date of delegation on a @waiting list for later follow-up. In all cases, it’s processed appropriately to Omnifocus and then deleted. 1
  3. If it’s not actionable, it’s either reference material (stored in Simplenote and then deleted), junk (deleted) or a date-specific item that either will happen in the future (added to calendar and then deleted) or could happen in the future (added to Someday/Maybe list and then deleted).

This process is basically David Allen’s GTD methodology applied to email, and takes about an hour per day. Plus, it’s super simple. No rules. No color coding. No custom inboxes. No scripting. Just observe, decide and act. That’s it.

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Update: Brief follow-up and clarification.

  1. Every email message is deleted after it’s been processed. Your email client is not a filing cabinet. I’ve stood patiently by people’s desks while they scroll through hundreds of messages to find a single bit of information far too often. If it was appropriately stored and tagged in a reference system, life would be much easier. ↩