I’m not quite as hardcore about my email management as Cory Dransfeldt, who claims in his post I deleted all of my email filters to be raw-dogging his email. He doesn’t use any filters any longer, but manages incoming email manually. Frankly, that sounds exhausting.
I did, however, nuke all of my filters and folders and move everything back to my inbox. I then created one filter to hide bullshit email from corporations and organizations. Just one.
One Filter to sort them all, One Filter to move them, One Filter to hide them all and in the archive bind them.
Here’s how it works:
-
It checks the from field for any of the following strings:
- noreply
- no-reply
- no_reply
- donor
- notifications
- service
- It looks for the word “unsubscribe” in the entire text of the email.
- Should an email match either of the conditions above, it gets moved to my archive folder, where I will deal with it at my convenience. (Perhaps a little at a time while taking a dump.)
This seems to me a reasonable compromise. Mail from actual people still gets into my inbox. Almost everything else is out of sight but still accessible via search or by accessing the archive folder. If a non-personal email gets to my inbox, I can update this filter as needed.
I lied...
I should admit that I do have a second filter. Any email from my wife gets flagged as important. Because it is important if it comes from Kitty Witch.