I was reading a post the other day at 43 Folders and it really got me thinking about how I manage my email.
I currently have just under 2000 messages sitting in my inbox – unfiltered and waiting action (file or delete!). I also had Mail checking each minute, sound on and Mail Appetizer floating on top of things to let me see what mail was pumping in. Currently Mail checks 8 accounts as well.
I’ve since turned off the sound, hidden the dock and de-activated the mail appetizer plugin. I now manually switch to mail, which checks at 5 minute intervals (I like to reply immediately when possible). I am considering a longer interval – something I need to work on for sure. I seem to be switching over at a greater than 5 min interval so far which is good…
In addition, I’ve switched how I use email on my Treo from always on to poll each 30 min, with the obsessive manual check for good measure.
Today’s (minutes ago) wraps the second day of this usage pattern and I honestly feel that I was able to focus more on a few tasks rather than constantly switching over to mail. Man it’s distracting to do things the way I was and probably feeds my desire since it’s just always working on a loop.
Extra Bonus — I love the new found dock space. Maxing the screen space for windows is really nice and something I should have done a while back. I’ve got to get my inbox filtered down to a minimal number of messages as a priority to feel I’ve mastered this more… and it won’t hurt to get the withdrawal effect to go away from not seeing the second a new message arrives.
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