[jedahan]

I get around 50 emails a day, and hover around inbox 40

Removing all filters and categorization has helped me reach this number, and forced a few habits and mindset changes:

1: I aggressively unsubscribe from mailing lists. If you have to make a filter to automatically archive a mailing list because you never read it but want to keep it just unsubscribe. If you have to, bookmark the site but if you aren't reading it now when will you be?

2: I ask a lot more of the people who email me. If I have partial answers I send those immediately, and if I know I won't get around to it for a while I make it clear that it will take time. I err on the side of archiving unfinished conversations as if it is important most people are OK with sending a follow-up email.

[enobrev]

I have a very similar system, and for the first time in well over a decade, my total inbox (spanning 3 gmail accounts) has hovered somewhere around 10-15 messages for the past 2 months.

Two questions decide the fate of every email "Is this from a person I know?" and "Will I ever need to search for this?" If both are no, then it's destroyed with reckless abandon. All others are archived immediately. No "read" messages in my inbox, ever. It's either "unread" or it's archived.

I almost always Send + Archive, unless what I sent was "I'll take a look in a couple minutes". And then I Send + Archive as soon as I send the next reply. If it sits in my inbox for over a couple days, I add it to Asana (if I haven't already) and archive the message.

I unsubscribe to almost everything automated (besides my own daily system summaries, which I delete once I've reviewed them).

One thing I would _love_ to have is the ability to set expiration filters on my emails. For instance, I like getting travel deals in my inbox, but I never need them for more than a day (since they generally only last that long anyways). Same for system summaries: Auto-Delete or Auto-Archive after 3 days would be perfect.

Also, since I don't use a local client for email, the "Checker Plus for Gmail" Chrome extension is pretty great, since it shows everything as a unified inbox, and shows me a single "unread" number so I know when I need to dive in and do some triage.

[read]

Why do you want to know if an email is from a person you know?

[enobrev]

I like to have a history of emails from people I know.

[read]

If you could automatically have a history of emails from people you know, do you still need to know if a new email is from a person you know for you to manually process it? And if so, why?

I'm not so sure if I would want to destroy an email with reckless abandon if it's from someone I don't know but who know me. Maybe they want to get in touch about some of my work.

By the way, I liked the idea of expiration filters on emails.