My Solution to E-mail Overload (or, How You Can Scale a Mountain of E-mail and Live to Tell About It!)
I think I might be getting a handle on my e-mail overload problems. As I wrote in an earlier post, Work without E-mail: Is it Possible?:
I am drowning in e-mail, and it’s becoming less and less useful because I simply cannot keep up with the volume I receive every day. It’s a shame because a valuable form of communication is being lost. (Yes, I’ve tried all the InboxZero and GTD stuff…if the volume is too much, even those don’t work.)
I’m not getting any less e-mail these days, but I have devised a scheme which is helping me keep it under control. The basic premise is that I am prioritizing e-mail by how directly it has been sent to me. In the first section of this post, I will outline how I prioritize the mail, and in the second section I will explain how I process the mail.
Visual Version: I had a friend review this post, and he suggested that I need a visual, so I made this flowchart on my whiteboard, just for you! (Click the image the full view.)
Prioritizing Inbound E-mail
Inbox: Sent To Me
The first principle of my scheme is this: the only e-mail that goes in my Inbox are e-mails where my own e-mail address is actually on the To: line. All other e-mail is filtered out into folders (or labels in Gmail). Period.
A friend suggested that this post needed a visual, so I made this flowchart on my whiteboard, just for you! (Click the image the full view.)
My theory is that if the sender sent the message directly to me—if they specifically identified me by name—then it definitely deserves my attention. Not only is that logical…I mean, it’s common courtesy, right?
Beyond that, all other e-mail goes elsewhere. CC’s, mailing lists, etc. are almost by definition less important because the sender didn’t explicitly send it to me. (Yes, there are a few exceptions to this rule, but for the most part it’s true.) Or, if not by definition, then for certain on average because while some are important, many are not.
From here on out, it’s simply how I sort all the rest of the mail.
CC: Carbon Copy
Next, I have a folder for e-mail where my address is on the CC: line. These senders thought, “this is an e-mail Scott should be aware of, so I’ll CC: him.” Again, intended for me, but not as important for things addressed directly to me.
Everything Else: Not to Me
Everything was explicitly not sent to me because my address was not on the To: or CC: line. The person who sent it did not have me in mind when they sent it. In 95% of the cases, it was sent to a mailing list to which I belong, so the sender was thinking of the group, not of me.
The problem with the e-mails sent to a group is that I don’t know how I relate to them. I know my relationship to e-mail sent directly to me, or where I am CC:’d. But, I don’t know my relationship to these e-mails. I don’t know if the mail is important to me or not…I just know that it’s mail and it showed up in my Inbox.
Ultimately, these are the really pernicious e-mails because they cost a lot of time to figure out if they are important or not. For example…
Have you ever been part of a long e-mail thread on a group e-mail alias? This happens to me all the time. When I read the mail for a the first time, I have to read it through to decide if it’s an important conversation for me to be a part of…which takes time. If it is relevant, then great. But, if not, it was a waste of time. And, it’s a gift that keeps on giving: each time I get a reply to the thread another mail clutters up my inbox.
So, I have a folder called “Not to Me” for everything else where my e-mail address is neither on the To: or CC: lines. But, wait…there’s more!
Known Relationships: Not all Mailing Lists are the Same
There’s one final adjustment to the system regarding mailing lists: not all lists are the same. Shortly after I started dumping all of the e-mail “not to me” in one folder I realized I need to filter some of these messages out into their own folders.
For every person, these folders are not going to be the same for you as they are for me because each of us belong to different lists and groups. But, here are my special folders for groups:
- Alerts (notifications from our web monitoring systems)
- Cheez Dev (our all developer alias)
- Cheez Tech (our all product team alias)
- Release Notifications (from our deployment system)
- Reports (for our automated daily scorecards)
The Magic of Processing
So, now that I have my e-mail all sorted, it’s time to explain how I process it. That is, how I go through my e-mails and deal with them. The beauty of the system I’ve devised is that it makes processing really easy.
Previously, I found that the biggest cost when reading my e-mail was the time that I had to spend figuring out if I needed to respond to the e-mail or not. What makes this system easy is that I know the probability of whether or not I need to respond by the folder.
So, when I get to work and start reading my e-mail, here’s how I process:
- Alerts and Release Notifications. I never have to respond to these—they’re just informational, so all I need to do is skim them.
- Reports. These are also informational, but every once in awhile they need to be forwarded to someone with a question. Pretty much, I cruise through them like I do the previous folders.
- Cheez Dev and Cheez Tech. These folders contain conversations that I might need or want to participate in, otherwise they’re just informational. So, I can skim them like Alerts and Reports with only a small mindset tweak: I need to pay attention for any conversations that require my input.
- CC’s. CC’s are pretty much like Cheez Dev and Cheez Tech, although the topics vary much more widely. As a result, the processing of each message takes a little longer because I need to read with more focus in order to understand the context. That being said, the reply rate is the same as Cheez Dev and Cheez Tech.
- Not to Me. This is everything else, and it’s the lowest priority. Pretty much, these get treated the same way as CC’s, although the reply rate is far less.
- Inbox. Honestly, I can get through all the above mail in 1/10th the time that I used to because the way the mail gets categorized into folders enables me to process it quickly. Before, I had to spend time with each mail trying to figure out how much, if any, attention it required. But, now I know, and the result is that I’m much faster at getting through them.
So, after I’ve cruised through the relatively unimportant messages, what’s left, of course, is the Inbox: stuff sent directly to me. Just like before, I need to pay attention to every single one of these, and almost all of them require thoughtful comprehension and a reply. They take time, no doubt, but they’re also the messages that deserve time.
So, that’s my system. What do you think?
(Maybe I need to think of a name for it and give it a brand and get a trademark and become famous for teaching people how to scale a mountain of e-mail and live to tell about it. Any ideas?)
I love it Scott, my experience with GTD and InboxZero were similar to yours. I will be shamelessly copying your method.
Steve Hamilton
24 May 11 at 11:48 am
I love SaneBox ( http://www.sanebox.com/ / @sanebox ). It’s a gmail application that basically does a simplified version of what you’re describing, with very little intervention from me.
Daryn
24 May 11 at 11:57 am
I like the notion of sorting out based on priority (CC, mailing lists) but beyond that, the one email filter that I find very helpful (and AFAIK know not possible in Gmail) is to filter out messages from messages from people a. not in my address book or b. that I’ve not previously sent messages to.
If Gmail implemented this, I might finally let go of using a desktop email client.
randy stewart
24 May 11 at 12:11 pm
Deja Vu! My system, developed over time, is similar, using Outlook, and in particular, the ‘rules engine’; highlights:
a) upon arrival, email sender is checked against Contacts; if it’s from a known contact, email get’s tagged with ‘known sender’ Category tag.
b) Now, if (a) is true, and my name is in the TO: line, email s.l. text is color-coded dark blue to get my attention; if I’m cc:ed’ it’s normal(black)
c) If my name is not explicit in TO: or CC: (e.g., distribution list), the text is colored in a muted grey (low priority)
d) Certain ‘regularly received’ items (e.g., a regular report) is filed by the rules into a pre-designated folder upon arrival; I look in these folders as often as I need this information
e) ‘Conversations’ are grouped into one expandable line(this may be an Outlook 2010 only feature) so the cacophany of ‘Reply All’s doesn’t fill my visual space.
Despite all of this, admittedly I still have a tough time, because I find that a) I don’t always follow my own discipline and b)out of sight becomes out of mind, and sending items to folders is the kiss of death (no less so then letting it ‘roll’ off the page). Also, in a perfect world, people only put your name in the CC: when it’s fyi, put you in the TO: when it’s really to you, and email police flog anyone who doesn’t comply. But alas, in this imperfect world, it doesn’t always work that way.
But I suppose these tricks are going to be how we work until that special day comes that Steve Jobs promised a long time ago, where we come home, and calmly say, “Good afternoon HAL, do I have any important messages requiring my attention?”
Andrew Gansler
24 May 11 at 1:11 pm
Also, I highly recommend learning and using gmail keyboard shortcuts.
Josh
24 May 11 at 10:50 pm
@Josh: I totally use Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts…they’re a huge time saver. I just wish there were more of them!
scottporad
24 May 11 at 10:53 pm
Let’s hope this works – i really need it
Suzi
25 May 11 at 12:05 am
I use a similar setup for Google Reader, organising & categorising the feeds into logical groups. That allows me to scan through literally hundreds of items quickly as they are grouped by interest/topic & my liklihood of reading the items in depth.
Great that you’ve found a simple way of applying a simlar logic to email, I know it saves me so much time reading through RSS.
Alistair
25 May 11 at 6:24 am
Feels like Priority Inbox was concocted with the same types of calculations in mind, but maybe it should calculate what’s “Important” based on your definitions… I’ll work this in and see how I do.
As far as protection of this breakthrough idea [;)], I think you should call it something along the lines of RTE sorting — for “relate to email” — TM that, boom.
David
25 May 11 at 9:06 am
So using the CC’d and Not Me is quite useful but is there any way to easily remove messages from a custom label/inbox similar to archiving Inbox messages?
My issue is that once a CC’d email is read, it remains in the secondary inbox in chronological order even if I Archive it.
Other than that my hour long test of this method has been solid.
Andrew
25 May 11 at 11:41 am
The closest I can get is using this in the Multiple Inboxes Query:
{is:(Not to Me) is:(unread)}
Kind of dangerous because read emails disappear from the secondary “Not to Me” inbox, but it is progress.
Andrew
25 May 11 at 12:05 pm
@Andrew: it sounds like you’re using GMail Multiple Inboxes. I haven’t used those, so I don’t know. I use the labels, and there is a button to remove the label. I remove the label when I am done reading it.
scottporad
25 May 11 at 1:37 pm
Hi Scott,
Just wanted to clear up a possible misunderstanding about SaneBox. (Thanks Daryn for the plug!). SaneBox works with any email server: IMAP, Exchange, gmail, yahoo, aol, etc… (except hotmail and other POP only services). Also, we don’t just filter by importance. We also allow you to defer and blackhole email and we can monitor your SPAM for important email.
Best Wishes,
Stuart
President/Founder SaneBox
Stuart Roseman
26 May 11 at 11:29 am
@Stuart Thanks for the info. I’m curious, how does SaneBox work under the covers? Is it using Bayesean filtering? Or, something else?
scottporad
26 May 11 at 1:53 pm
[...] How You Can Scale a Mountain of E-mail and Live to Tell About ItHow Scott Porad (CTO for Cheezburger) found a system that works for him to manage his email overload. [...]
Other People Said Interesting Things: May 26th — Another Blogger
26 May 11 at 8:15 pm
Yep, those are all very helpful methods. I’ve implemented quite a few other methods to handle the exceptions to the rules.
For example, I set up a subdomain with a wildcard address. Then when I put my email address anywhere, I can uniquely tag the email in a reliable method. For example, if I add “bulk” to the address, I filter that so it ends up in my “bulk” folder. I add that tag to any address I expect to see bulk email from. This ends up being a bit more reliable than relying on cc, to, bcc…
I know that this can also be solved with +tag in an email address without using a wildcard. However, I’ve found quite a few forms online that reject + in the email field.
For developers this can come in extremely handy. Whenever I have to enter an email address into something I’m working on, I use a unique email address that tells me where to find it if I need to. This way I never have to ask “which server is sending me these error messages?”.
So I’ve got rules for how I provide my email address, rules setup on the server and rules setup in my email client (though since I don’t always use an email client anymore, I try to do most of it on the server.)
Forrest
2 Jun 11 at 12:57 pm
Great approach, Scott. I’m going to get this set up and see how it works for me. I think I’d also like to set up a filter for all those emails — even though my address appears in the to: field — that are one-word responses to a message I’ve sent. You know, the ones that just say “thanks” or “got it” or “cool” Got a rule for those?
Larry Asher
3 Aug 11 at 10:03 pm
@Larry…I don’t have a rule for that, but it’s a good idea.
scottporad
3 Aug 11 at 10:05 pm
[...] My Solution to E-mail Overload (or, How You Can Scale a Mountain of E-mail and Live to Tell About It!). more [...]
Curated Series – Tips, Statistics and Wisdom | unifiedinbox
22 Aug 11 at 4:32 pm
Well done Scott.
A heavy problem with web communications is
the absence of a reply from the destinee.
If anyone could help me write a routine:
“Hello …: did you receive my email here below?”
then investors would go into it full speed
because mass-mailings would go down and the
whole system would become a “polite society”
again, like when you walk on the street and
someone says “Hello!”, you would normally
reply, otherwise the person would ask why.
No web without love & care (or rules)!
Nic
Nic de Potter
27 Aug 11 at 2:59 am