Email management

This post by The Guardian was highlighted to me by a friend (thanks Ethann). It's actually a good read about managing your email and techniques for not letting your inbox manage you and feeling swamped. It's worth a browse through.

It highlights a new Gmail feature called "Inbox Pause" that will, as the name suggests, pause any new email coming into your Inbox. I'm not sure that this would suit me as I would not look forward to the build up being released to my Inbox, and what about those important emails that you will miss???

Personally I use the Gmail "Priority Inbox" features. It seems to work pretty well as I find it's a way to still see everything come in, but at a glance know what should probably be looked at first. Coupled with the use of filters and making sure that daily mailers completely miss my inbox, I find that I'm able to keep a fairly tidy email client.

Of course having an Android Phone and a 2 second rule (if it seems like junk after 2 seconds... delete!) helps a lot and a "read it and deal with it policy". My read it and deal with it policy means that I'm not re-reading emails all the time. How many times do you get an email and think "I'll deal with that or reply to that later"? For a lot of email this means reading it twice... not smart, although not always avoidable.

This makes me wonder what policies, tips and techniques other people have out there...