Comments on: How I Organize my Email, Lists and Brainstorming: My Holy Trinity of Productivity

By: Kathleen

Kathleen — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 19:40:24 +0000

Sara, – Your title, “How I Organize my Email, Lists and Brainstorming: My Holy Trinity of Productivity” really caught my eye. [[And WHEN I HAVE TIME to read it, I bet it will be really helpful.]]
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(Sorry, I couldn’t resist). In truth, I am just starting to realize what it is that I am lacking when it comes to organizing, and it is not the tangibles. It is the info overload and the feeling that I need to organize ALL the available info on the web [[and that could take all week]] Thanks for the jump start. I will be back soon to pick your brain for ideas. . . . You know – WHEN I HAVE TIME.

By: Sara Rosso

Sara Rosso — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 11:38:09 +0000

Hi Heather – I don’t like Gmail’s Priority Inbox because I have a pretty sophisticated incoming mail filter system and it doesn’t know what to do with it. I’ll probably write a post about it, but if I read 100% of my mother’s email, and 100% of my boss’ email, Gmail will think they are both high-priority, but perhaps at 3am I’m only interested in reading an email from my mother, not my boss. This is where my filtering comes in, especially since I manage multiple email addresses in the same Gmail instance.

By: Heather

Heather — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 04:34:25 +0000

Great article! I like how you tied the three concepts together; makes a lot of sense, and it highlights *why* I feel certain things are working for me. Have you tried gMail’s Priority Inbox? It “learns” what’s important and files the rest below in the regular Inbox. There are two sections in the middle sections you can customize, too: you could tell it to show the five most recent starred items or show 10 messages of a certain tag. It’s nice, because your could train it to put your GroupOn and Facebook emails in the bottom area and the personal ones can rise to the top, helping to automatically filter what you call Action, Hold, and the other stuff you can go through later in bulk. I also use Google Tasks because it’s so easy to have them on my (google) calendar and move them around, thereby creating essentially the MIT and the Upcoming. Thanks again!

By: Joy

Joy — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:40:37 +0000

Thanks for sharing this! Great ideas. I spent some time last night creating email folders and deleting a bunch of old emails.

By: ben

ben — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 08:44:07 +0000

very interesting and inspirational.
i use gmail tasks which works also on my android phone (right now i have left the iphone for android – an HTC desire).
I used to have multiple folders for the email but now I will give a try to your 3 folder system or a close approximation.