Re: Possible ideas for "inbox zero"

[Wes Hardaker <wes@hardakers.net>]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> This article has some workable ideas for a more "inbox zero" kind of
> setup:

I've long thought about how to achieve a reduced view of my boxes.  I
think my biggest problem stems from a number of elements, that could
easily be implemented with some software tweaks.  My mail falls into a
few simple categories in general:

a) Reply/Act immediately and delete (wish they were all this way)
b) Reply/Act immediately but then keep the thread around for further study
   until it dies.  This is a hard one (more below).
   bb) read immediately and keep it around until it dies or I need to
   reply to a sub-thread

c) Can't reply/act right now because of either time or some dependency issue
d) delete it because it doesn't need a response (even better than a!)
e) archive for later for reference

The problem is that most of my mail falls into the dreaded b category or
bb category.  Sometimes the b/bb category eventually needs to moved to
archive but I don't know that yet either.

I use some marks to help with this, and have a script that I run
directly on the imap server to delete trashed mail only after a
particular life cycle (eg, 21 days).  So the folder appears mostly
blank.  But I rarely seem to mentally trust it and thus leave stuff
marked as read instead of trashed (I also have a script that runs out of
cron syncing Trashed (phone) and Expired (gnus)).

The bulk of my inbox(es - 10 fairly important ones) fall into the large
category filled with past b and bb type articles.  Occasionally I try to
take a run through them and clean them up.

One idea: have a mark for a subject that functionally says "leave around
till it's silent for a week, then hide it for another week, then trash
it".

I also have an "old" version of most boxes that serve as a fade-out
point, but again: it's hard to do searching with a combined view
(notmuch really helps here, except I don't mirror the old boxes from my
imap server because of the doubled bandwidth problem of pulling it down
again into a different box once it's auto-moved via script on the
server).

Ugh.  No one is still reading this I'm sure.
-- 
Wes Hardaker                                     
My Pictures:       http://capturedonearth.com/
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