How to tame your inbox: a calm method for email
A full inbox rarely comes from too much mail. It comes from opening the same message five times without deciding what to do with it. The method below works in any mail app: check in batches, decide once, and let the inbox empty itself. Then we show how mello does most of the sorting for you.
Your inbox is not a to-do list
Mail arrives in the order other people choose, so the inbox is a poor place to keep track of your own work. Use it as a sorting table: every message that lands there waits for one decision, then leaves.
- What you must do goes to a to-do list, with a date if it has one.
- What can wait leaves until the day it matters.
- Everything else is archived. Archived mail isn’t gone: it’s one search away.
An empty inbox isn’t the goal in itself. The goal is that every message still in it is one you haven’t seen yet.
Check in batches
Each check costs a few minutes of focus, whether you find one message or thirty. So check less often, and do it properly when you do.
- Pick two or three times a day, for example after your first task, after lunch and before you stop. Between them, keep the mail app closed.
- Turn off notifications for everything but people. A newsletter never needs you in the next five minutes.
- Start with mail from people. Newsletters and notifications can wait for the end of a batch, or for the end of the week.
Decide once
Open each message once, and don’t close it until you’ve decided. There are only four choices:
- Reply now, if the answer takes less than two minutes. Writing it later takes longer than writing it now.
- Make it a to-do, if it asks for more work than that.
- Put it off, if it only matters later: a ticket for next month, a reminder for Friday.
- Archive it, if it needs nothing from you. This is most mail.
If you catch yourself reading a message a second time, stop and pick one of the four.
Let mello sort first
mello tells mail from people apart from newsletters and notifications as it arrives. Each message in the list carries a small news or notif tag, and the tabs above the list show one kind at a time:
| Tab | Key | |
|---|---|---|
| Everything | All | 1 |
| Only what you haven’t read | Unread | 2 |
| Messages you marked to do | To-do | 3 |
| What you want to keep at hand | Favorites | 4 |
| Mail from people | People | 5 |
| Newsletters and mailing lists | Newsletters | 6 |
| Receipts, alerts, shipping notices | Notifications | 7 |
Start a batch with People. Then go through Newsletters and Notifications quickly, at the end. To clear them out for good, see newsletters and subscriptions.
Notifications on your phone or computer follow the same idea. Under Settings → Notifications, newsletters and mailing lists don’t notify you, unless you turn on Also for newsletters and mailing lists.
Read the whole conversation at once
Half the time spent on mail goes to finding out what was said before. In mello, an open message shows its conversation around it: Earlier in this conversation above, Later in this conversation below, with your own replies from Sent and the messages you archived. Only the message just before it is unfolded; click any line to open another.
So you can answer the latest message without searching for the first one, and archive the whole exchange with a clear conscience.
Snooze what can wait
Snoozing takes a message out of your inbox and brings it back when you need it. It’s the honest version of “I’ll leave it there so I don’t forget.”
- Go to a message in the list with the arrow keys, or open it, and press b. You can also right-click a message and choose Snooze….
- Pick later today, tomorrow, this weekend, next week, or Pick date & time….
- The message waits in the Snoozed folder. At that time it comes back to the top of your inbox, unread.
The mail server does this, not your browser, so it works with every app closed, and the message also comes back in Apple Mail or on your phone. Changed your mind? Open it in Snoozed and choose Back to inbox now.
Archive without fear
Press e to archive a message. It moves to the Archive folder, where search still finds it: press g to open the folder, then / to search. Search understands fields like from:anna, has:attachment or is:unanswered, and forgives a typo in a plain word.
When you archive or delete the message you’re reading, mello opens the next one, so you can go through a batch without going back to the list. If you’d rather return to the list each time, turn off Auto-advance under Settings → General.
For what you must do, press s: the message gets a to-do mark and shows under the To-do tab until you press s again. For bigger jobs, turn the message into a task, with a date: see never miss a follow-up.
A ten-minute routine
Put it together, two or three times a day:
- Press 5 for People. Read each message once.
- Reply right away to whatever takes under two minutes (r to reply), and send.
- Press s for what needs real work, or b to snooze what only matters later.
- Press e on everything else. Auto-advance opens the next message.
- Press 6, then 7. Skim the newsletters and notifications, select the page with
*a, and press e.
What stays in your inbox afterwards is what came in while you were working. That’s the point. All the keys are in keyboard shortcuts, or press ? in mello.