Where’s the peanut butter?!

If you’re like me then you get your knickers in a kerfuffle when you have to deal with processing lots of email. Here’s my approach when I’m doing this in a desktop application. I haven’t really had to do this with personal mail in a while.

1. Categorize - add categories to mail as it comes in based on whatever properties it has (by what email list it’s a part of, who it’s from, whether it was sent directly to you vs. you got it via a mailing list, etc.)
2. Break if sent directly to you - leave messages which were sent directly to you in the inbox
3. Move - if the mail should be moved to a specific folder, move it there.

The net result is that your mail is all neatly labeled (by the categories you defined and applied in step 1). Mail which is addressed directly to you always stays in the inbox since this is more likely to need your attention. And other mail gets filtered to some appropriate folder.

Here’s one other tip to consider in the “Move” step: consider having some rules which move mail from high volume discussion lists directly to the trash. Lists like this tend to frequently be time sinks and if you have the time you can go find them in the trash pretty easily (because those messages are categorized, too) but they are less likely to suck away your time (since they’re already in the trash) and less likely to make you hit an inbox quota (since they’re already deleted).

But I’m sure there’s more than one way to do it - comments are welcome!