Here is my one-week check-in for my Avoid, Embrace project on email. So far, the biggest change I have made is in filtering out forwards into their own folder. In Gmail, I used this filter to do the trick:

from:(email address of forwarder | email address of another forwarder) to:(-my email address) Do this: Skip Inbox, Apply label “SA/Forwards”

I chose to deal with them as “announcements” per ActiveInbox’s built-in label category, but you can use anything you like.

Filtered out into their own folder, I can look at the subject lines and delete accordingly. Now the only items in my “Someday” category are things I want to legitimately do or review someday. This is a huge win!

The “Time” labels have been somewhat helpful, but because I am on spring break this week, I am just going through messages regardless of how long I think they might take.

I have been setting meaningful deadlines, for the most part, but I am pretty lazy at the moment so there are some un-deadlined items floating about that I need to attack.

The state of my email, as of right now:

  • Flagged items: Zero!
  • Action items: Twelve, up from ten. I moved some mislabeled "Someday" items here.
  • Waiting On: Four, down from seven. Resolution, hooray!
  • Someday: Forty, a mere third of last week's 120.

It looks pretty good from here.