Working through the inbox
Mail is a real mailbox, not a list of notifications about one. This is the round trip: read, answer, file, and turn the two or three messages a day that are actually work into something with an owner.
When you have done this: An inbox you empty rather than scroll, and a mail that became a task instead of staying a mail.
- 01
Set the window up once
The reading pane can sit on the right, along the bottom, or be hidden altogether, and the folder list hides too. Pane on the right suits a wide screen and long threads; pane at the bottom suits short messages you triage quickly. Pick one now — it is remembered, and changing it halfway through a morning costs you your place.
- 02
Read, and decide in one pass
Every message gets one of four endings: answer it, file it, make it somebody’s job, or delete it. Star is not an ending — a starred message you have not decided about is still in the inbox, just wearing a star.
- 03
Answer: reply, reply all, or forward
Reply all is the one to be deliberate about: it is the difference between answering a person and addressing a meeting. Forward carries the attachments; reply does not.
- 04
File: archive, move, or label
Archive takes it out of the inbox and keeps it. Move to puts it in a folder you chose. Labels are the third way, and they need a local mailbox — on a mailbox that lives on somebody else’s server the option tells you so rather than failing quietly.
- 05
Turn a mail into a task
Create a task from the message. This is the step that empties an inbox: a mail that is really a job stops being mail and becomes a task with an owner and a day, and the original is still there to open from it.
- 06
Keep the sender
Add sender to contacts, from the message. The address is already correct, which is more than can be said for one typed in from a business card.
- 07
When somebody asks for proof
Download original (.eml) gives you the message exactly as it arrived, headers and all — the thing to send when a dispute is about what was actually received, rather than about what somebody remembers reading.
- 08
Mark spam rather than deleting it
Report spam teaches the mailbox; delete only removes your copy of the problem. On a shared mailbox that difference is nine other people still getting it.
What people get wrong
- Archive and delete are not the same act, and only one of them is reversible in a year’s time.
- A shared mailbox is somebody else’s inbox too: read a message, leave it unread, and the next person cannot tell whether it has been handled. Assign or file it.