The Nerdist Way_ How to Reach the Next Level (In Real Life) - Chris Hardwick [66]
SET UP YOUR OWN POST OFFICE: PRESORT YOUR MAIL
Well, since most modern communication revolves around electronic mail, let’s start there! So how do you manage the avalanche of sadness that is your daily in-box? With a system, of course! If every morning a machine dumped all of your food on your face at once, do you think you would ever eat breakfast? Chances are you’d question the invention of that cursed machine and why you traded money for it in the first place. This machine is your computer. Without a good email sorting system in place, it is essentially dumping on your face.
Do you have one in-box that all of your mail piles into? WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO YOURSELF? In this delivery system, every time you open your email it’s like that cliché where someone opens a messy closet and it buries them in junk. Unless you can set up a mini digital post office that keeps your in-box manageable, you’re always going to feel like all of your email is in one giant litter box.
FIRST, do you have a Gmail account? You should. It has the best spam filters, in this Nerd’s opinion. Also it’s free, configurable, and you get a ton of storage. (More if you pay a small annual fee!) I run all of my accounts through it, even the Nerdist .com ones. If you set it up to come through a mail client like Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, or Apple’s native mail program then it will be more backed up than if you just use the web portal, which is not at all. If you have a work email that sits on your back in an oppressive manner, get a separate personal email. This will keep your business emails out of your personal life and vicey versey. Next, set up another Gmail account for non-interpersonal correspondence. Invest $0 in one and start giving it out to any Web site, bank, or utility company that wants to send you information about your account or “special offers.” Then go back to your main Gmail. Click the little gear icon and select “Mail Settings.” Under the “Accounts and Import” tab, tell Gmail to pull in your extra accounts mail. I could explain it here, but it is VERY easy and self-explanatory when you get there. Once you’ve done this, click the “Labels” tab. Scroll down past “System Labels” to “Labels.” Create a label for correspondence from companies that will try to continually sell you stuff because you bought something from them once. I call mine “Lists,” because they’re usually lists I didn’t ask to be on. Use whatever word makes you happy. Now scroll all the way to the bottom and look for the tiny hyperlinked phrase “Create a new filter.” Here you’ll see a bunch of fields that represent the different fields of an email: From, To, Subject, and so on. The idea here is to set up an email rule that directs any email coming from the red herring email address into the “Lists” folder. In the “To” field, enter your red herring email and click “Next Step.” On the vertical list, select the checkbox next to “Skip the Inbox (Archive It),” then select the one next to “Apply the Label” and select your “Lists” label. On the bottom right, check “Also Apply Filter to XX Conversations Below” and click “Create Filter.” And there you have it! Now, some of the more hard-core Nerds reading this book will “Pffffft, no shit” at this, but I am surprised how many people I know that I think are pretty Nerdy but don’t think to sort their mail with email rules. Remember, most of the companies that you give your email to will sell it to annoying greedy spammers so this move alone will cut your in-box junk down by a million percent (could be a half million percent—again, individual results may vary).
This one is a little more obscure, and doesn’t always work with companies who ask for your email address, but it’s worth a shot. Gmail allows you to add + identifiers to your email address