Reading about email kind of sucks. Here, then, is enough advice for a lifetime, distilled into the only three things you need to know about email:
Do link to this page to bring a halt to any rambling blog comments, forum debates, twitter updates, or emails about email. Pixels are precious. Every heartbeat counts.
Your email address says a lot about you. If, like me, you work remotely away from life’s inconveniences — like traffic and other people — your address makes more of a first impression than your clothes, your car, or your pallid complexion ever will.
I’m only slightly ashamed to admit that, whenever someone new emails me, I take a few seconds to examine their email address, consider their thought process, and judge them as a human being. Here’s what goes through my mind:
I share a house and a business with my partner, but I’d never share an inbox with her. It’s up there with his-and-hers bidets. Some things are best dealt with alone. At least they’re happy, I guess. Or hiding something.
Look, John, I know that picking usernames has been a lifelong drag, but don’t just tag a number on the end. Especially not your birth year. You’re better than that.
You have a family email address? Who has a family email address? Do you sit around the HappyStation 2000 after dinner composing emails together and updating your family webs-? Wait, you have a family website? Who has a family website?
I have a glowing red button on my desk for cutesy addresses like these. Nothing dramatic. It just deletes them.
That won’t get you to the top of Google, my friend. The internet doesn’t work like the phone book.
What’s that, my good man? You’re a marketing director with a passion for helping iPhone developers breach new and exciting markets, build strong corporate images, and explore and project consistent brand values? And you’ve got a Hotmail address?
I’ve spent 10 years trying to ditch my asinine prejudice against AOL users, but I still struggle to take aol.com addresses seriously. If you’re an AOL user and you feel hurt by this, I can only apologise and say that I’m trying to grow out of it.
My wariness harks back to AOL’s former role within the People’s Republic of American Internet Providers; an age where AOL subscribers were considered Web simpletons by many, because most of them believed that the aol.com website was the entire internet. A bit like Facebook users today.
What’s that, James? You’re emailing from home? Thanks for letting me know. Why not get specific next time you’re registering an address and hint at which room you’re in? Or what year you think you’re writing from?
If you’re using a day-to-day email address that contains anything other than your own name or business name, I suggest that you consider updating it. Or don’t. You can always make your first impression next time.
I had a dream. A dream that email could be fun again. A dream that, instead of wrestling with my inbox every day, we could share the same bus and get along just fine. Today that dream is realised and I’m going to share it with you. It won’t change the face of the planet or answer the Eternal Question (“have you seen my car keys?”), but it might save you a few hours a week.
About two years ago I was up to my nostrils in email. I made a blueprint for Inbox Heaven, the perfect email setup that would let me:
I spent years experimenting. I’ve used .Mac mail (now MobileMe), Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Squirrel Mail, and some exotic stuff that would sound more at home on a Russian Space Orbiter (Laszlo Mail anyone?).
I’ve tweaked desktop mail apps like Thunderbird and Mail.app with all manner of widgets. I’ve tried 3 different versions of Outlook together with one version of Entourage, which made me break down and cry like a baby.
Shortly after what I now refer to as the Great Entourage Blackout of 2006, I sat down and had a chocolate HobNob. Then it clicked.
By the second year of messing around with email, I had already tried the right software. I just hadn’t used it the right way. Inbox Heaven is a combination of two things: really smart use of a Gmail account and the 3 Inbox Heaven rules.
Let’s get stuck in. This isn’t going to mess anything up, so if you don’t like Inbox Heaven after a couple of weeks, you can safely go back to whatever crappy system you were using before.
Get a Gmail account: You can sign up here. For Inbox Heaven, you need to be using Gmail in your browser only and not with a desktop mail client. Trust me. This will all make sense soon.
Point all your email accounts at Gmail: If you skip this step, the system won’t work for you. We’re going to get Gmail to check all of your email accounts: work, play, secret love notes; it’s all going to come to Gmail. A key idea behind Inbox Heaven is to start checking and sending mail in one place instead of seven. There are two options for getting mail into Gmail:
Forward mail from your other accounts to your new gmail.com address. This is the best option for most because you’ll receive mail a lot faster. Go ahead and set your other email accounts to forward to Gmail right now. If you don’t see a setting for this, use option 2 below.
Alternatively, Gmail’s free Mail Fetcher service will periodically retrieve mail from each account you specify. Carefully follow the instructions to set up Mail Fetcher here. Do this for all of your email accounts.
Set up sending from all your accounts: Now that you have all your mail coming to Gmail, we’re going to set things up so you can send email from multiple addresses and not just your Gmail one. To do this, simply follow the ‘custom from’ setup instructions. Repeat for all of your accounts.
Install Google Notifier: This makes the Gmail experience complete. Get Google Notifier here. It will act as your mail alert service and give you a handy shortcut for composing new mail.
Banish your old mail application: Remove it from from your Mac’s dock or PC’s shortcut bar. If you use webmail from some other provider, stop using it. It’s really important that you go to only one source (Gmail) from now on to send and receive mail. Just try it; you can always go back to your old ways if you decide it’s not for you after a few weeks.
Have a clean up: That’s it! You’re set up. If you’ve told Gmail to check your other accounts like I’ve insisted, or if you’re an existing Gmail user, you’ll probably have an inbox full of email right now. Once you’ve read this article, the first thing to do is have a good clean up to get your inbox empty. If that means spending four hours clearing 1,043 emails, then just do it. Find that time somewhere so you’ll be able to continue winning the battle against your inbox for good.
These rules (once five, now just three) have been shamelessly borrowed and adapted from much smarter folk than me, notably Merlin Mann, whose Inbox Zero presentation is a must-see. The rules I use and recommend are as follows:
Email that needs starring must also be archived. This is really important. Actioning email is a two-step process. You should first star it. Then you should click the archive button. This removes it from your inbox and places it in your starred “to-do list”.
Starred email is your to-do list. The starred list you check twice a day is a to-do list for your inbox. It should only contain items that are actionable – they need a reply or a follow-up call or some other input from you.
Your inbox should stay empty. Forever. If you find your inbox is backing up with email, you’re doing something wrong. Once you’ve scanned an email, you should be doing something with it. Don’t leave it in your inbox to sort out later.
Unstar email when you’ve dealt with it. There’s a big button at the top of starred email that says “Remove Star”. Use it. Your starred email should only contain email that requires further action from you. If you’ve replied to someone, unstar that email. Only star it again if their follow-up needs action from you.
Stick with browser-based email only. It will feel odd if you’re not used to it, but keep trying. Detaching your inbox from your desktop is a key step towards making you more productive. It also makes you far more mobile; you’ll be able to comfortably check and send from all of your email addresses anywhere in the world with Web access, without changing your habits or learning new software.
To compose an email quickly, use the Google Notifier shortcut. Just click on the notifier icon, then “Compose Mail”. A new window or tab will open in your default browser.
I hope you find Inbox Heaven useful; do persevere with it, spread the word, and feel free to get in touch with your questions and comments. Oh, and if you find yourself faced with a tricky problem, it seems that chocolate HobNobs are the key.
