Google Apps: In search of a worthy email system

2008-10-12T00:00:00-07:00

Email, in a lot of ways, is one of the most critical applications for me.

There was a point in my life where I made sure all my email was kept together indefinitely, but as time grew, so did this task.

For the longest time, I had my own hosted @davedash.com, @ftmax.com addresses. These were hosted diligently at pair Networks. pair introduced the qmail system which gave birth to my trend of using "minus addressing" (if your email is user@domain.com you can use user-anything@domain.com). It was my way of seeing which sites spammed me (so far I only outed one company using this trick) and just to organize my inbox.

Gmail...

In 2004, I decided to experiment with Gmail. I had a lot of email to manage and Gmail's ajax-enabled features made its webmail service far superior to any competitors and even made desktop apps cower in shame.

The ideology of search don't sort, and archive don't delete, made Gmail a perfect storage system for all my emails. I never had to lose track of email again. Just about any conversation, or discussion I've had over email - I can pull up very quickly using Gmail.

I'd say after 4 years of solid use, the experiment is over, I was sold on Gmail.

Switching hosts.

I did, however, move my domain management over to Dreamhost. This is where it still resides, and that was a problem. Minus addressing was not a part of Dreamhost. I had to painstakingly create procmail files that simulated this. Inevitably pushing anything and everything to my gmail account if it matched the syntax I chose.

I knew Gmail supported plus addressing (user+anything@gmail.com), but I never took the plunge. My habit, was and is still minus style.

Google Apps

The Dreamhost account I used has been tossed from one server to the next, unfortunately there's a lot of hand-holding I need to do in order to make sure procmail and all my other tweaks I've made to my accounts work. I finally threw in the towel today and settled on Google Apps.

Both my wife and I use Gmail (with aliased emails @katiebonn.com and @davedash.com respectively), so I enabled an app and did the painstaking migration process.

While it's not that complicated, you don't ever realize how entangled your Google account can be. We both use GTalk and Google Calendar and we both have large Gmail accounts. Mine has 70K+ addresses and is slowly being migrated to my Google Apps email address.

In the end, I think this struggle will be worth it, since I'll have my addresses managed in a clean efficient way.

This will also pave the path for me to move more of my web sites off of Dreamhost and onto Slicehost.

Wish me luck.

Inbox Zero: Dave Dash style

2007-10-04T00:00:00-07:00

[tags]inbox, zero, 0, inbox zero, gtd, email, pending, todo, gtd[/tags]

Guido from Dutch Open Projects asked me to explain, Inbox Zero and at the time I couldn't do it justice, but I think now that I think about it I can do my own spin.

The principle is this: The inbox should be relatively clean, simple email should be taken care of now, and things that you need more time with should be sorted elsewhere.

My inbox used to swell up close to 100 some emails, and then I realized... this inbox is pointless if it's full. I'm never going to look at the older mails and it will slowly start growing and growing.

Fresh start

So the most important step was the fresh start. I moved all my email to a new folder called dmz. I just needed some behavioral rules to keep my clean inbox clean. We can safely ignore the dmz for now. We'll get back to it, but the rules are more important.

The rules

This is where I might deviate from the official Inbox Zero. I have various classes of email:

Todo list items: Someone tells me to do something.
Unimportant emails (bacn): Facebook notifications, livejournal, bicycling sale notifications... all that
Pending items: Things that are current, but might be awaiting a response
Events: information about places, phone calls, etc
Trips: hotel, flight, rental car information for any upcoming trips

I create labels in gmail, but you can use folders if you use another client. Some email won't fit into any category, those can either be read, replied and archived as necessary. If they need to be referenced immediately put them in a folder/label as appropriate.

Incoming email

All incoming mail should be handled ASAP. Your goal every time you see your inbox (okay... almost every time) is to get it to zero. First, if it's something that can be finished with a quick email, then do it. If it's just information that you don't need to reference again, remember it. Everything else, chuck it in a folder.

Mailing lists and bacn

The nice thing about about developing OCD to keep your inbox clean is you go into unsubscribe mode. Immediately you start chucking lists that you don't use or you at least filter them into folders which you can take on at your leisure.

Some lists are worth keeping, some are classified as [bacn], stuff you don't want to deal with at the moment. I put those in a [bacn] folder, along with Facebook, LiveJournal, LinkedIn and any other social network that I really want to read at some point, just not now.

Todo items

Todo items for me are the bulk of my email that would normally clutter my inbox. The truth is I do about half of them, the rest are just ideals that I'd never do, but they all go to one place. I also made a new todo list which is call todo.thisweek. It's things that really need to get done soon, not just on a rainy day.

Pending items

Pending items is a superb concept. Often I'll run into an email exchange with people where they'll email me, and I'll reply, and I'll leave their original email in my inbox as a reminder to follow up with them. This works really well especially as a freelance developer who gets solicited for work, but doesn't get immediate follow through. It's also useful if you are waiting for certain events to offer before you can act on an email.

Events

Sometimes their special events and I'm too lazy to put it in my calendar, I create an events folder that just reminds me about details. If my wife asks me "Where's the reception at for the wedding?" I can open this folder and find out right away. Once an event has past those emails get moved out.

Trips

I am an avid Priceline user. So I get emails if my bid was accepted, and final details about hotels, flights, etc. I like them all in one spot so I can access them instantly and print out anything that I need to before I leave my trusty printer.

Automatic Filtering

Automatic filtering can help quite a bit. Especially as you see email sent from robots, those can easily go into your bacn folder, or "check-in" reminders can go into your trips folder.

I use Gmail, so I can have email in multiple folders which makes it easy to be organized automatically, yet keep important emails still coming into my inbox.

Conclusion

Try this, out, branch out, and find a way to manage all your emails. Being organized in this way can keep you on top of things. It's not perfect as it requires human intervention, so you may find yourself needing to periodically go through "email dashes" (no pun intended) and clean house.