Hello reader,
there are many different things on my mind and even more on my to-do list, so I briefly thought about skipping this month’s newsletter. But breaking the chain after just three issues? No way. So with a few minutes left on the clock, here’s the August issue of 9 Ambitions. I’m Johannes Schardt, friend of the eleventh hour, powered by deadlines.
Email sequel
Last month I promised to talk about my email process and setup, so here we go.
First off, I aim to check emails only twice a day (morning and afternoon) and answer everything — unless it’s extremely urgent — in one block in the afternoon (Notice the word „aim“. Usually I peak at my inbox more often. However, I often close my email client for periods of focused work and I don’t use any notifications).
It annoys me to see emails over and over again in my inbox. As soon as I have read an email, I want it to disappear. For most emails it’s fine if I never see them again. Few need a reply or another action. But even those emails should be out of sight until I’m ready to deal with them.
To accommodate this, I made a few adjustments in my email program (Apple Mail on macOS). Basically, it’s a combination of smart mailboxes and custom keyboard shortcuts.
First, there’s a smart mailbox called Unread. You can probably guess the conditions: „Message is in mailbox Inbox“ and „Message is unread“. You can get the same result by using the unread filter in your inbox. I think this was a feature introduced in macOS Sierra. Since my workflow predates that version, I still use a smart mailbox to show just the unread emails.
This smart mailbox is my default view. It’s my Inbox. It’s what I see when I open the mail client.
In a two column view I use the arrows on the keyboard to go through each email, which is displayed in full on the right. As soon as I select an email, the status switches automatically to „read“ which means it doesn’t meet the condition anymore — hence, it disappears from the list as soon as I deselect.
Then I have three more smart mailboxes called Reply, Act On and Pinned. All of them use the condition „Mail has flag (color)“. I use orange for Reply, green for Act On and purple for Pinned.
Reply collects all the emails I want to answer. Act On is for emails that are triggers to do something (change a password, pay an invoice etc). Pinned is for emails with information I need at a later point.
Two more smart mailboxes are called Today („Date received is in the last 1 day“) and This Week („Date received is in the last 7 days“ and „Date received is not in the last 1 day“). More about those in a minute.
As mentioned above, I use flags to collect emails I want to reply to or act on in their respective mailbox. Since flags don’t come with default shortcuts, I created my own. This can be done in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts. There, I set shortcuts for the flags I’m using.
With these shortcuts I can quickly flag emails when I scan them in my Unread mailbox. Flagged emails will appear in the other smart mailboxes (and be gone from the Unread mailbox).
Whenever I’m ready to get back to the people who wrote me, I go to the Reply mailbox and work through all the emails in there (when I have sent a reply, I use the same keyboard shortcut to unflag the mail, so it vanishes from this mailbox as well).
It sometimes happens that I read an email and decided not to do anything with it. Later I realize that I need to check it again or do something with it. That’s when the Today and This Week mailboxes come in handy. If I know that it was an email I saw earlier that day, I’ll find it in Today. Emails from a few days ago are in This Week. And of course there is always the search function.
I used to have rules to sort newsletters into mailboxes. Each newsletter had a rule based on the senders email address. But it was too much effort. I now use dedicated email addresses to subscribe to newsletters. So instead of using many different rules based on the sender’s address, I now only have a few for the recipient address.
All the above only works for Mail on macOS. The iOS counterpart isn’t nearly as adaptable. But that doesn’t bother me too much, since I don’t do any email work on the phone. I sometimes scan through my emails, but that’s about it. Since the default flag on iOS Mail is orange, I also use it for the Reply mailbox on my laptop. So whenever I see an email on my phone that needs an answer, I swipe left. When I’m back on my laptop, it will show up in the Reply mailbox.
This workflow is far from perfect. But it works for me.
If you use any tweaks or hacks or if you have product recommendations regarding emails, I would love to hear from you.
Looking for studio mates
I would also love to hear from you, if you are a freelancer or part of a small team looking for a place to work. We are currently renting out a few desks in our beautiful studio. Here’s the offer.
Link of the month
I leave you with a link to an article I wish I had thought of: The UX of LEGO Interface Panels.
Thanks for reading,
Johannes