Email coping mechanisms

[kickaha]

Okay, so now that my Inbox hit 2600 unsorted msgs today, dating back to January 2006 (that's before we moved up here, note), I decided to roll up my sleeves and take care of this crap. I've been deleting like a madman - I have trashed *SO MANY* stupid jokes sent by family members. I've moved all pics sent by friends and family that were, like, actual pictures and not ZOMG! LOOK AT THIS! images to iPhoto, properly tagged and bagged. I'm down to 1400msgs or so, and still culling.

Now... what to do with them when I'm done? Traditionally, I've meticulously sorted them into folders (I have about, oh... 90 or so, all nicely hierarchical and organized), but a) this is a pain, b) this cuts up conversations among many people into a plethora of snippets in different folders (which I hate). But, the alternative has always been to just... lump them. And that seems like such a nightmare. I've been doing it this way since 1990 or so, and I have a basically complete record of all non-trivial, non-spam email since 1992. (Yeah, scary huh? It's interesting to use it as an ad hoc diary of sorts, to go back and reread conversations with friends then and now, to see my own words and thoughts, and how they've changed... it's kind of terrifying, yet neat.)

Was watching Merlin Mann's inboxzero talk at Google though, and he suggests exactly that: one, and exactly one, folder for all email worth saving, named 'Archive'. Once I was able to get my intestines to stop spasming at the idea, he had a good point... we have these little things called 'search' and 'metadata'... so why not use them?

I realized he is, as he often is, quite spot on. Why should I put *any* work into organizing my mail, when I can search through thousands upon thousands of messages generally faster than I can manually look for what I want? When I use search *anyway* to look for things, why do I have it set up to artificially limit where I'm searching?

So what're y'all's coping mechanisms?

Comments

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

That's my feeling as well - unfortunately, for the ubiquity of metadata tags everywhere else, MacOS X's default Mail client doesn't offer a UI for it. :P So, I'm experimenting.

But yeah, for right now, 1-3 Archive folders, Smart Folders based on 'normal' searches when necessary, and otherwise... meh. Not going to worry about it excessively.

[jason0x21.livejournal.com]

Gmail offers tags. And automatic tagging. And a big archive folder. GMAIL FTW.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

Alright, last question:

Can I send mail from that account and have it appear as my regular email account? I don't mean Reply-To, but honest to god regular account in the From line as well. If not, it won't work for me.

I mean sure, I can have all my accounts forward to it, but if I can't send from them as well, it's simply not going to work for various reasons, and Reply-To won't cut it.

[jason0x21.livejournal.com]

Yes. It's what I do for XDU all the time. All the wxdu.org accounts are actually gmail accounts set up in exactly that manner. As long as you "own" that address that you're trying to spoof, you're alright.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Must ponder.

Secure HTTP an option? Not seeing it on their site... HMMmm... Off to pore over Terms of Service...

[ssandv.livejournal.com]

Yes, GMail has https. For some bizarre reason, it's completely optional though, so it's easy to screw up. There's a couple Firefox addins/greasemonkey hacks to ensure you end up on the https page. Dunno what there is for Safari though.

And yes, you can set your mailto: to gmail, though I'm not sure quite how that's done. I just downloaded some TSR or other and it had a checkbox that I clicked and *poof*.