email

Email is a huge problem for most of us, and there are tons of ideas for dealing with it. As I continue to work with clients, I've come to believe there are really only three things you can do to master email:

• Get Fewer,
• Get Faster, and
• Get Control

Let's break them down:

Get Fewer

First, manage your incoming volume. A few suggestions:

• Send less - not every message requires a response (yes, this means not sending thank-you-only).
• Ask others to send less, including reducing CC, Forward, and "Reply All" messages.
• Educate (kindly) frequent senders on best practices.
• Get off low-value distribution lists, and move email-based subscriptions to RSS (see Move email-based subscriptions to RSS).

I'm a grateful Gmail user (my main email address forwards to my Gmail account), and I've been a satisfied user for the past few years. While I don't use Gmail to implement my Getting Things Done system [1], I've noticed four things that, if corrected, could increase productivity for all users. See what you think!

• Make it easy to edit subjects
• Allow search without seeing the inbox
• Simplify adding contacts
• Allow manual or longer retrieval delay

Make it easy to edit subjects