Have you heard of people declaring email bankruptcy, wiping out their mailbox and emailing everyone in their address book that they are starting over? Or what about the people who have boldly declared they are no longer using email? It is tempting. Both of these rather severe reactions seem somewhat reasonable given how much we have come to disdain managing the ever increasing flood and time demands of email.
There are three tools I want to share with you that I use to manage all of my personal and business email in less than an hour a day.
For those who have been following my blog for long, you know I am not interested in this to be a productivity or technology junkie. I try to be more productive and leverage the best technology so I have more time for the things ever increasing demands on our time crowd out: white space, reading, focused time with friends and family, etc.
The three tools below solve two major email problems: (1) wading through the ever increasing quantity; and (2) managing messages that require action. With the tools below, you can transform your inbox into a folder with only important messages that you either need to act on or need to reschedule for action at another day/time. Enjoy!
- Key features
- with incredible accuracy, determines which messages should be in your inbox and allows you to easily train it to get smarter (much better than gmail’s priority inbox or manual rules)
- helps you manage email attachments, stripping them from messages if you want and saving them to sites like Dropbox, Google Drive or Box
- allows you to identify messages that should return to your inbox another day/time so you can use your inbox as a to-do list
- works equally well whether using your email client on your computer, in a browser or on your mobile or tablet device
- How it works
- Signup and configure Sanebox to connect to your email account to work its magic
- As needed, train the system on which messages should go in your inbox by simply moving them to/from the Inbox and new SaneLater folder
- Review the once or twice a day digest you will receive of less important messages and click to move to your inbox if needed
- Forward or BCC messages to SaneBox using syntax such as 3days@sanebox.com or june10@sanebox.com and you’ll receive a confirmation message letting you know if your message was understood or not. On the designated day/time, your message will reappear in your inbox with links you can click to snooze for another day/time.. You can view a queue of these messages in your SaneReminders folder.
- Compatibility
- Works with virtually all email platforms including exchange, gmail, outlook, yahoo, etc.
- Cost
- $2/mo (what I use) to $20/mo depending on the number of email accounts and special features you want
- Free trial and team edition available
- Key features
- FollowUpThen is unnecessary if you subscribe to the Sanebox lunch or dinner plans since those plans offer a similar feature for 250 or unlimited messages
- allows you to identify messages that should return to your inbox another day/time so you can use your inbox as a to-do list
- How it works
- Signup so FollowUpThen recognizes your email address
- Forward or BCC messages to FollowUpThen using syntax such as 3days@followupthen.com or june10@followupthen.com
- You’ll receive a confirmation message letting you know if your message was understood (create a rule to move these out of the inbox) or not.
- On the designated day/time, your message will reappear in your inbox with links you can click to snooze for another day/time.
- You can view your queue of these messages on the FollowUpThen website
- Compatibility
- Works with all email platforms, including mobile, because messages are scheduled for action on another day/time by simply forwarding or BCC’ing the message to FollowUpThen.
- Cost
- Free (what I use) or $4.99/mo for premium features
- Key features
- Quickly archive, delete or moves messages
- Mark messages to come back to your inbox another day/time so you can use your inbox as a to-do list
- How to use it
- Install the app and signup. There is a long waiting list, but waiting to signup will not make the wait any shorter.
- Swipe left to mark a message to return to your inbox another day/time. You can view a queue of these messages within the app.
- Swipe left and hold to move a message to a folder
- Swipe right to archive a message
- Swipe right and hold to delete a message
- Compatibility
- iPhone, iPad and Android
- Cost
- Free
If you have any trouble setting up or using these apps, comment below and I will try to help. Also, please share success stories if these tools make a difference for you or you have other tools or techniques to share with the community of readers.
5 Comments
I will say that I am a big fan of FollowUpThen. I use it in place of Outlook reminders for my team. That way, if someone leaves, then we all still get the reminders. I’m also a big fan of Techsmith’s simply file.
Appreciate the tip Jake. For those using Outlook and interested in learning about the Simply File plugin, here’s the link: http://www.techhit.com/SimplyFile/
Levi-
It’s been a few months since you posted this blog so do you like SaneBox or FollowUpThen better? I’m looking for ways to be more productive and could use the help. Thanks
Definitely sanebox. It’s full set of features makes a huge difference taming email. FollowUpThen would only be preferred if you want a free option.
Sorry, just realized my reply via email didn’t post…
Unless paying for sanebox is a turnoff, I’d definitely recommend SaneBox. It’s more complete feature set really makes a big difference in volume of email, getting to inbox zero and using your inbox as a to-do list.