Disassemble the mailbox using hundreds of filters
Having decided to take into account my own time, I quickly discovered that it was wasted in cases when I had to constantly switch from one type of activity to another. I’m not talking about switching every hour or two - on the contrary, it increases productivity. I rather mean a multiple change of activity within 15-30 minutes.
Indeed, imagine that you wanted to check your email, but quickly switched to your favorite blog in the browser, and then went deeper into correspondence with friends on Facebook and performing tasks in Mafia Wars. Soon you will find that you have not really done anything. You have visited many places, learned a lot and touched a lot, but lost a lot of time.
Losses of time begin already at the stage of checking mail. You go into the mailbox, and there are dozens of letters. You glance at them, and you see three notifications from Facebook, one of Twitter, five mailings from the authors of the programs that you once downloaded or the services that you registered with. Of a dozen letters, it is good if one is written by a living person who is waiting for an answer. I receive up to hundreds of letters every day — mostly impersonal messages from press services or administrations of various sites.
')
Prior to the start of time recording, I did not realize that every time I checked mail, I lose up to half an hour to clean up these debris. Worse, and not aware of the other: a person cannot single out one important message out of fifty from one viewing. And, of course, the third - I did not come to check the mail, but to see if there were any personal letters from my friends and acquaintances.
This is very important, because many people treat the mailbox very formally as the means of delivering all the letters. In fact, it is a collection of what
1) as relevant;
2) applies to you personally;
3) you care.
You can easily imagine a mailbox in which a thousand stupid letters fall every day. One cannot imagine a person who approves of this and comes to his post office in order to read mountains of garbage. Maybe he is waiting for a response to his resume; maybe messages from colleagues; perhaps just letters from the family — wife and children.
A person who says to himself “I’ll go to the post office” actually says something else:
“I'll come and see what's new, interesting,” “I’ll see if a letter came from my beloved,” “I wonder if a classmate sent me pictures from Egypt,” “I’d have to look at the notifications from Facebook, Learn, and everything else” .
Moreover, if he is at work, and there they have strictness, then he may not be the last to speak. But he comes into the mail - and disappears under a layer of spam, meaningless notifications and the like slag.
It so happened that I once did not need press releases. But out of habit, I read them. Realizing that I was doing this in vain, I began to disassemble my Gmail box, unaware that I would make a lot of discoveries in the next few hours.
I used the filter system and the ability of Gmail to apply this system to all the letters that have already arrived. This becomes especially important for people like me, who have over 25 thousand letters in their Inbox. If I want to then look for something labeled "Press Releases", then I have to be sure that all releases have such a label.
Step 1. Before the big cleaning I was sick, and in the "Inbox" I collected over 120 letters. This is very convenient, because I started right by creating a rule according to which letters containing the word “press release” were deleted from “Inbox” (“archived” in Gmail terms) and received the label “press release”.
Step 2. I noticed that far from all releases this magic trick worked. Then I began to open letters with releases one at a time and I looked to see if they were sent on behalf of agencies, from the domains of PR companies. Many were sent - I scored the domain name in the “From whom” filter field and in the same way transferred several thousand messages to press releases.
Step 3. I processed several remaining letters individually, because nothing prevents to create a filter for each email address. If in the future a release from a new address comes to me, I will simply spend 30 seconds on the same procedure, and it will never appear again in the Inbox, letting it go down to the Press Releases.
Step 4. I assigned the social tag to all notifications from social networks, blog hosting sites and the like. I used to have separate folders - LJ, Facebook, Twitter. Now I understand that it was stupid. When I go to the post office to look at the comments in LiveJournal, I will inevitably look at messages from Twitter or Facebook. I am in a social mood. The state of mind in this case has little to do with the mechanically-librarian intention to “get the last three answers to tweets”.
Step 5. One of the most numerous categories of letters was news of services, websites, software products, discounts and various offers. All of this came together under the label subscriptions, and, like press releases or social networking posts, left the Inbox. Indeed, it is necessary to view commercial offers. It is foolish to unsubscribe from them altogether. But even more stupid - to spend time on them with each entry into the mail.
Step 6. In the "Inbox" there were only personal letters, bills from the iTunes store and messages about registration in a particular service. On the last, I receive a regs tag when I receive it in order to be on hand just in case.
Result. Surprisingly, as it turned out, almost no one writes to me. Only 2-3 letters fall on the Inbox per day, and all of them are important. Suddenly, it became clear that folders with sludge can be purposefully checked only once every 2-3 days - anyway, there is nothing very important accumulated there.
For a couple of days, I also noticed that I go to the post office less often, and when I go, I look at the list of letters less often, not knowing which one to choose. I answered them all.
Some may say that there is nothing new in the aggressive use of filters (although I think that a few, despite the link “create a filter based on this message,” created several dozen of them). This is not about filters, about the mood with which you enter the mail. The fact that no one wants to read the mail and lose time in it. We want to receive interesting letters.
Indeed, imagine that you wanted to check your email, but quickly switched to your favorite blog in the browser, and then went deeper into correspondence with friends on Facebook and performing tasks in Mafia Wars. Soon you will find that you have not really done anything. You have visited many places, learned a lot and touched a lot, but lost a lot of time.
Losses of time begin already at the stage of checking mail. You go into the mailbox, and there are dozens of letters. You glance at them, and you see three notifications from Facebook, one of Twitter, five mailings from the authors of the programs that you once downloaded or the services that you registered with. Of a dozen letters, it is good if one is written by a living person who is waiting for an answer. I receive up to hundreds of letters every day — mostly impersonal messages from press services or administrations of various sites.
')
Prior to the start of time recording, I did not realize that every time I checked mail, I lose up to half an hour to clean up these debris. Worse, and not aware of the other: a person cannot single out one important message out of fifty from one viewing. And, of course, the third - I did not come to check the mail, but to see if there were any personal letters from my friends and acquaintances.
This is very important, because many people treat the mailbox very formally as the means of delivering all the letters. In fact, it is a collection of what
1) as relevant;
2) applies to you personally;
3) you care.
You can easily imagine a mailbox in which a thousand stupid letters fall every day. One cannot imagine a person who approves of this and comes to his post office in order to read mountains of garbage. Maybe he is waiting for a response to his resume; maybe messages from colleagues; perhaps just letters from the family — wife and children.
A person who says to himself “I’ll go to the post office” actually says something else:
“I'll come and see what's new, interesting,” “I’ll see if a letter came from my beloved,” “I wonder if a classmate sent me pictures from Egypt,” “I’d have to look at the notifications from Facebook, Learn, and everything else” .
Moreover, if he is at work, and there they have strictness, then he may not be the last to speak. But he comes into the mail - and disappears under a layer of spam, meaningless notifications and the like slag.
It so happened that I once did not need press releases. But out of habit, I read them. Realizing that I was doing this in vain, I began to disassemble my Gmail box, unaware that I would make a lot of discoveries in the next few hours.
I used the filter system and the ability of Gmail to apply this system to all the letters that have already arrived. This becomes especially important for people like me, who have over 25 thousand letters in their Inbox. If I want to then look for something labeled "Press Releases", then I have to be sure that all releases have such a label.
Step 1. Before the big cleaning I was sick, and in the "Inbox" I collected over 120 letters. This is very convenient, because I started right by creating a rule according to which letters containing the word “press release” were deleted from “Inbox” (“archived” in Gmail terms) and received the label “press release”.
Step 2. I noticed that far from all releases this magic trick worked. Then I began to open letters with releases one at a time and I looked to see if they were sent on behalf of agencies, from the domains of PR companies. Many were sent - I scored the domain name in the “From whom” filter field and in the same way transferred several thousand messages to press releases.
Step 3. I processed several remaining letters individually, because nothing prevents to create a filter for each email address. If in the future a release from a new address comes to me, I will simply spend 30 seconds on the same procedure, and it will never appear again in the Inbox, letting it go down to the Press Releases.
Step 4. I assigned the social tag to all notifications from social networks, blog hosting sites and the like. I used to have separate folders - LJ, Facebook, Twitter. Now I understand that it was stupid. When I go to the post office to look at the comments in LiveJournal, I will inevitably look at messages from Twitter or Facebook. I am in a social mood. The state of mind in this case has little to do with the mechanically-librarian intention to “get the last three answers to tweets”.
Step 5. One of the most numerous categories of letters was news of services, websites, software products, discounts and various offers. All of this came together under the label subscriptions, and, like press releases or social networking posts, left the Inbox. Indeed, it is necessary to view commercial offers. It is foolish to unsubscribe from them altogether. But even more stupid - to spend time on them with each entry into the mail.
Step 6. In the "Inbox" there were only personal letters, bills from the iTunes store and messages about registration in a particular service. On the last, I receive a regs tag when I receive it in order to be on hand just in case.
Result. Surprisingly, as it turned out, almost no one writes to me. Only 2-3 letters fall on the Inbox per day, and all of them are important. Suddenly, it became clear that folders with sludge can be purposefully checked only once every 2-3 days - anyway, there is nothing very important accumulated there.
For a couple of days, I also noticed that I go to the post office less often, and when I go, I look at the list of letters less often, not knowing which one to choose. I answered them all.
Some may say that there is nothing new in the aggressive use of filters (although I think that a few, despite the link “create a filter based on this message,” created several dozen of them). This is not about filters, about the mood with which you enter the mail. The fact that no one wants to read the mail and lose time in it. We want to receive interesting letters.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/112383/
All Articles