Taming Email

Tips, Tricks and Essays on Email Overload and Taming the Beast that is Email

Archives for January 2006

On Domains, Accounts and Addresses

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As I started to write some of the material destined for future articles here
on Taming Email, it became apparent to me
that I was making a lot of assumptions about how email is organized and
structured. In order to avoid losing folks from the very start, a few
definitions of some of the basic concepts of email might well be in order, both
for now, and for reference later.

Based on the kinds of questions I get out on Ask Leo!, it’s clear that the differences between
email domains, accounts and addresses is one area of common confusion. Since
I’ll be relying heavily on some of those differences as I lay out my
recommending “taming tricks”, it’s worth a few minutes to go over exactly what
those are.

A lot of people understand domains, but the difference between an email
address and an email account? Not so much.

[Read more…]

Save Everything so you can Delete More

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My first recommendation is going to sound very counter-intuitive.
In fact, many of you are going to think I’m completely nuts. Or, perhaps, even
more nuts than you already thought.

One of the reasons I was able to do the analysis in the article That’s a lot of mail!
is because I save all my mail.

All my mail.

I have every piece of mail my wife and I received last year. Every bit of
spam, every virus, every incoming message, no matter how important, how
annoying or how trivial.

That seems like the exact opposite of what we’re trying to accomplish as we
try to tame the beast that is email. We want less mail, not
more, right?

So why do I do it? Because it’s incredibly liberating.

[Read more…]

That’s a lot of mail!

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Before I dive in to documenting some of the techniques I use to manage it
all, I thought a snapshot of a year’s worth of email might be interesting.

Last year (2005) my wife and I received 4.5 gigabytes of
email in almost half a million email messages.

Yes, that would be a lot of email.

How it breaks down is kind of interesting, as well.

[Read more…]

My Inbox is Empty. Yours?

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Wait! Don’t curse me out! You can have an empty inbox too.

That’s what Taming Email is
all about – getting your email under control

“Doing” Email

Many years ago while working at Microsoft, my manager commented to me that
he spent too much time “doing email”. Even then, circa 1992, before spam and
viruses and before email marketing, email had become an important part of daily
business. It was easy to feel overwhelmed by the flood of messages, all seeming
to demand some kind of response.

But wait. Just what does it mean to “do email”?

In my opinion it means that we’re not looking at email properly. It means
that a shift in attitude and approach is required.

Email isn’t something you “do” – it’s a tool you use.

Taming Email is
about honing your skills using that tool. Just like a carpenter builds better
homes as he becomes more proficient using the tools of his trade, we can all
become better at whatever it we do by learning to more effectively and
efficiently use the tool that is email.

And what a powerful tool it is.

Let’s look a little more closely at the difference between “doing email” and
using email as a tool

[Read more…]