I need hacks for dealing with email overload. How do you deal with your inbox? What are your secrets? I especially want unusual tricks or tips.

Question

Erin · Answer

Manage your subscriptions: Gmail has an option to easily see all your subscription emails and unsubscribe from there. You’d be surprised how many are duplicates of the same thing sending from different accounts!

I delete my un-needed emails every day and keep my Unread at 0 most of the time, but a drastic unsubscribing session made my daily clean-up so much quicker! Also decreasing the mental clutter is chef’s kiss!

JZ · Answer

The Most Effective Way to Manage Your Inbox Is Also the Easiest: I wrote an essay about this in 2020! The original was paywalled so here’s a free link on my site.

My unusual tip is to turn off all the bells and whistles: no filters, no multiple inboxes, no categorizing or tagging, etc. Those just become more to manage and fiddle with.

To manage your inbox, you just need to do three things:

Keep messages out (unsubscribe)

Deal with messages quickly (respond, snooze, or archive)

Actually give yourself enough time to get it done (schedule an email block each day)

Ally · Answer

Extra Inbox App: I just found this gem about two weeks ago, and it has completely changed the way I go about my day to day life. I’ve linked my Gmail inboxes and iPhone calendar, and it generates a daily summary of important emails and upcoming events, and it even gives you links to address the important items without opening the email. I find the summary particularly helpful, as it helps me get through all the clutter without getting overwhelmed. By far my favorite email app.

chocofunda · Answer

Meal planner autofill ingredients: Shopping is much easier when you can choose meals and just have a list of all the ingredients you need for those meals

Megan Schlabaugh · Answer

Multiple Inboxes: If you go into settings you can select “multiple inboxes” and then section your email into 5 sections.

Mine is set up with my inbox at the top, and then I triage them into the 4 sections below a few times a day. My sections are “do right away” at the top, then I have a section for each client I’m working with, and at the bottom “personal”.

I got my inbox to zero (this took a while), and now all incoming mail gets sorted or archived. When an email is closed out I hit archive.

The only issue is labeled emails don’t show up on my phone the same way - but for work I try to use my computer for email unless it’s a quick response.

JenniO · Answer

Multiple email accounts: I have an old yahoo account for all of my e-commerce and businesses that I don’t want them to have my personal email. I have a business Gmail, a personal gmail and another gmail for my apartment/neighborhood. It helps!!!

Sarah Beck · Answer

Starred E-mails *At the Top* (Grouped Together) in Gmail: I set up my Gmail so that all my unread e-mails are grouped together on top. From there, I delete almost everything, but anything I need to take an action on I "star." All my starred e-mails are grouped together right after the unread. Then, after that lives everything else (which could just be archived but instead sits in there) to be searched when needed. Once I've taken the action I need on that starred e-mail, I un-star it and it goes back into the sea of "everything else." Basically I'm always trying to get to "unread" zero and minimizing the number of "starred" at the top.

This way, my list of actionable things is all together. This is for my personal e-mail, and it's worked well for me for many years. My work e-mail is a whole other Rube Goldberg system of organization.

To do this, select settings, select Priority Inbox, click "customize" right beneath the option.

Then set up your sections so that:

Section 1: Unread

Section 2: Starred

Section 3: Everything else

*ALSO I send all newsletters to a separate folder before it hits my inbox to peruse at my leisure. So I don't see those in the "unread".