Death through email lists, and how I overcame it.

[rwl4]

Just to be clear here, I am speaking of lists that come from companies such as Amazon, volunteer organizations, daily news sites, etc.

I found that getting rid of all the site mailing lists I was part of took my load down significantly. I was getting anywhere between 5-15 emails a day that I simply "deleted" as they came in. I now have a personal policy: All daily, weekly, or monthly newsletters that I receive are unsubscribed immediately.

Of course, there are a couple that I just could not bring myself to delete. The answer? I set up a filter to auto-move it to my archive folder. Ever since the mid '90s, I haven't deleted a single legitimate email. I just have folders set up in the following structure:

2007
01-January
02-February
03-March
...
2006
01-January
02-February
...

The great thing is that it also allows me to "delete" (archive) other mass mailings I don't have the heart to unsubscribe from: those from my mother. You know, those ones that have a picture of a flower and a short story, those ones you don't want to let suck your life away by reading, but don't feel right deleting immediately.

With my system, I enjoy these benefits:
1. No worries that I might have deleted an email that could be a useful reference
2. No hard feelings about getting any "don't want to do now, but someday" emails out of my inbox. I intend to read them...but I never do. They are there for if I ever get a chance to.
3. It makes a great time capsule. I can go to my 1999 emails and see what my daily life was consumed with before I finally cut the cord with the 9-5 employee worklife. I even have ones I wanted to delete, but now am thankful I didn't for posterity sake.
4. I can keep my inbox completely empty, which makes it so when I finally do check it at the set times in the day, if there are messages, they are sure to be new.

Also, most products, events, or anything else an organization mentions in email lists are information that I wouldn't seek out on my own, and is therefore most likely not helping my already full life. It's like walking into a grocery store and having a salesperson keep walking up to you trying to pitch you on products you should try. If I want to try a product or event, I will seek it out.

Any thoughts?

[cornflower]

sounds like you have a great system there.. I've done similar and I just have the "meaty" emails left!

[wu-wei]

Most listservs have a "digest" that can be triggered, so you get a big ass email (think of it as auto-batching) instead of the constant "ping"

[Alister]

I'm a long time tech geek, and have been programing websites for nearly ten years (I know, I have internet email archives going back that far). I've been interested in various online endevours since 1987 (including the internet, but not the WWW, as that hadn't been invented then). It's important to be able to keep up with the various goings on in the various technologies I use, and so I have subscribed to various mailing lists and RSS feeds.

The emails don't end up in my gmail inboxes though - I'll filter it right into a named label and archive it, so it's left unread (I can go back and scan through it at my leisure) or search for something - and it's still all there, but mostly just as an number on the sidebar, or as the search results if I'm looking for something.

[iceaxe]

Alister - what are the steps to create the filter and the labels in gmail? I would love to do that but have been frustrated trying to set it up. Hope you can assist....and thanks in advance!!!