New Mail Order

You may recall that I wrote a couple of months ago about chipping away at my Inbox, and reducing it below the astronomical and shameful status of more than 1000 messages. Since that time, I've kept the Inbox roughly at 100 or so, shaving it back once it climbs to 150 or 200. (Yes, I get my share of email--this happens at least a couple of times a week.) Although it amounts to stalling other tasks on my part, I finally took a little more control over my email today, in the form of 2 plugins for Mail.app:

1. Letterbox: For the longest time, the vertical default arrangement for Mail was simply invisible to me. Then I saw a link to Letterbox over at 43F, and decided to give it a try. It helps that I have a fairly wide monitor. But now, I can see much more of my inbox than I could previously, and I'm able to set a mail message and its reply side-by-side without thinking about it. It took me all of 10 minutes to realize what I'd been missing from my mail interface.

2. Mail Act-On: A couple of weeks ago, Madeline and I were sitting in my office jawing about whatever and I hit upon the idea of being able to keystroke my incoming mail, so that I could color them according to a deadline threat level, e.g., red for "Do it now!", orange for "Do it today!" and so on. I didn't give it much thought beyond that.

Thank goodness someone else did. Act-On is a plugin that allows you to set up keystroke-handy Rules of the sort that Mail allows you to apply to incoming messages. In other words, when I am reading a message, I can bring up the Act-On menu and slot the message where I choose (or highlight it if I want). So my new mail order now consists of the following process:

Question 1: Does it require action? If so, then it goes into 1 of 6 folders, keyed to #'s 1 through 6 in Act-On, depending on immediacy (1=today, 2=next day or so, 3=this week, 4=this month, 5=this semester, 6 is a catchall for possible action items). I never leave the office with anything in folder 1, and I start each day by moving everything in folder 2 up, and I don't let the weekend pass without emptying folder 3. Them's the rules.

If no action is required, then Question 2: Should I archive it? If so, then I have a streamlined set of folders all gathered into a metafolder called Archive. Department business, student work, digital receipts, travel arrangements, correspondence, etc.--it all goes there.

If not, then delete the damn thing.

Start every day by emptying the inbox into 1 of 7 folders, and end every day by making sure that folder 1 (and sometimes 2 or 3) is empty. This is a plan I think I can live with.

Oh, and btw, Robin Benson maintains a pretty comprehensive page of plugins for Mac Mail users. It's how I found Act-On. For a more detailed description of it, there's an article I looked at from Macworld as well. If you're using Mail.app, this is definitely worth your attention...

That's all.