Posts from the ‘hacks’ Category

There’s endless information about dealing with your email inbox, including using filters and labels, in email systems like Gmail. If you’ve got a system that works, that’s great. This is probably more for those with their own domain and have email through a host that doesn’t have good (or any) server-side filtering.

Maintain personal, and work/business accounts for important correspondence. Use a free email service like Gmail for all your email lists, and anything else that isn’t vital. (These throwaway accounts are also used to maintain some anonymity for posting comments, social media, etc.)

Three reasons to segregate email:

One: It brings some sanity, because you can count on anything potentially important arriving in your primary account/s, without the noise of all the rest. It makes processing your primary inbox/es more manageable. Need a digital break?—ignore your non-primary email for a spell.

Two: It makes the task of whomever needs to take over your affairs when you leave the planet (or become incapacitated) much easier. Bills you receive, etc. It doesn’t matter if you’re young and in the best of health; just take care of this now by segregating your email. It’s one part of a larger process of getting your affairs in order before you need to. The more things you have in order while things are going great, the less stress there will be later for you and/or the person taking over your affairs.

Three: No need to worry about exceeding your disk quota. (If you use Gmail or similar, that may not be a concern.)

For your non-primary account/s, do take advantage of filters and/or labels, so you can dive into a ‘folder’ and read a bunch of emails on the same topic in one sitting.