This spring I decided to do something about my mail inbox that have been growing steadily since around 2005. Although I have attempted every now and then to keep it tidy, I was now determined to clean it up once and for all. I had seen a new app from a small company that was acquired by the Dropbox team around the time. As this news appeared on Slashdot it got my attention and so I started thinking – perhaps there is a better way? Unfortunately the app called Mailbox didn’t exist yet for Android phones or standalone clients in Windows. And even today, it does only supports Gmail and iCloud. Perhaps in the future, but that wouldn’t keep me from attempting to deal with my 10K+ emails in my inbox. So every now and then I would sort out, delete and archive mails, about 500 at a time. And today it finally happened – my inbox as of now has Zero mails! Following some clever advice found online the key is to have a small set of actions that allows for quick processing of incoming mails. Checking mails maximum once per hour is also a good practice rather than every time the inbox notification lights up. Answering emails with five sentences or less is another good practical advice.
One thing I would love too see is a mail client that are focused round these small set of actions and where each action has some clever connections to task-lists like Trello and appointment trackers like Google Calendar.