Treat the inbox as a to-do list
An inbox works when it holds only what still needs something from you. Everything else gets archived, which removes it from view and keeps it searchable forever. Archiving beats deleting, because storage is cheap and the receipt you delete is the one you need in March. It also beats filing, because search finds a message faster than you can remember which of forty folders you chose in 2022.
A small set of labels
You need very few. Most people can run on five: Receipts, Travel, Taxes, Home, and Waiting, which holds messages where the next move belongs to someone else. Check Waiting once a week. The Taxes label earns its keep every spring, when the charitable receipts, the forms from your bank and the letter from your loan servicer are all in one place.
Filters that do the sorting
Filters run on every incoming message, so an hour spent on them pays out for years.
- Send order confirmations, shipping notices and receipts straight to the Receipts label and past the inbox.
- Send newsletters you actually want to a Reading label, to be opened when you choose.
- Flag messages from the handful of senders who matter, such as your landlord, your bank's fraud desk, your child's school and your manager, so that they never sink.
- Filter anything containing the word unsubscribe out of the inbox if the flood is severe, and skim that pile weekly.
Two addresses and an honest unsubscribe
Keep one address for people, employers and money, and a second for shopping, loyalty programs and anything that demands an email before it shows you a price. Many providers also support plus addressing, in which a tag added after a plus sign in your username still reaches you and shows you who sold your address. For mail from real companies, use the unsubscribe link, which federal law requires them to honor within ten business days. For outright junk, do not click anything. Mark it as spam, because clicking confirms that the address is live.
Declaring bankruptcy
If the unread count is five figures, do not dig out by hand. Select everything older than thirty days and archive it in one move. Nothing is lost, anything urgent has already produced a second message, and you can start the system on a clean page.
Tip Turn off the new-mail notification and check at set times, two or three a day. Messages answered in batches take less total time than the same messages answered as interruptions.
