January 2006 Archives

As I started to write some of the material destined for future articles here on Taming Email, it became apparent to me that I was making a lot of assumptions about how email is organized and structured. In order to avoid losing folks from the very start, a few definitions of some of the basic concepts of email might well be in order, both for now, and for reference later.

Based on the kinds of questions I get out on Ask Leo!, it's clear that the differences between email domains, accounts and addresses is one area of common confusion. Since I'll be relying heavily on some of those differences as I lay out my recommending "taming tricks", it's worth a few minutes to go over exactly what those are.

A lot of people understand domains, but the difference between an email address and an email account? Not so much.

My first recommendation is going to sound very counter-intuitive. In fact, many of you are going to think I'm completely nuts. Or, perhaps, even more nuts than you already thought.

One of the reasons I was able to do the analysis in the article That's a lot of mail! is because I save all my mail.

All my mail.

I have every piece of mail my wife and I received last year. Every bit of spam, every virus, every incoming message, no matter how important, how annoying or how trivial.

That seems like the exact opposite of what we're trying to accomplish as we try to tame the beast that is email. We want less mail, not more, right?

So why do I do it? Because it's incredibly liberating.

Before I dive in to documenting some of the techniques I use to manage it all, I thought a snapshot of a year's worth of email might be interesting.

Last year (2005) my wife and I received 4.5 gigabytes of email in almost half a million email messages.

Yes, that would be a lot of email.

How it breaks down is kind of interesting, as well.

Wait! Don't curse me out! You can have an empty inbox too.

That's what Taming Email is all about - getting your email under control

"Doing" Email

Many years ago while working at Microsoft, my manager commented to me that he spent too much time "doing email". Even then, circa 1992, before spam and viruses and before email marketing, email had become an important part of daily business. It was easy to feel overwhelmed by the flood of messages, all seeming to demand some kind of response.

But wait. Just what does it mean to "do email"?

In my opinion it means that we're not looking at email properly. It means that a shift in attitude and approach is required.

Email isn't something you "do" - it's a tool you use.

Taming Email is about honing your skills using that tool. Just like a carpenter builds better homes as he becomes more proficient using the tools of his trade, we can all become better at whatever it we do by learning to more effectively and efficiently use the tool that is email.

And what a powerful tool it is.

Let's look a little more closely at the difference between "doing email" and using email as a tool