Recently in Rules Category

As I've said before, and probably will say again, understanding how your email client processes message rules and then using that feature is perhaps the single most effective thing you can do to help get your email under control. Rules really are that powerful.

So today I'm going to look at creating just one rule, the one rule I consider to be the most important rule you can have. So important that I'll call it The Golden Rule.

The popular Golden Rule goes something like this: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Our golden rule isn't really all that different, at least in intent. It's more along the lines of "Prioritize the people you know."

If I could have only one message rule, this would be it.

If you get a lot of email, think about how you deal with it as you process it. Chances are you see who it's from, or who it's too, or perhaps even what it's about, and based on that, you decide what to do with the email. You might respond to it immediately if it's from someone important. You might leave it for later if it's a subscription to an email newsletter. Heck, you might even delete it if it's from someone you never want to hear from again.

(I'm going to assume, for the moment, that your spam is taken care of elsewhere. Obviously in most cases, deleting spam is probably a goodly portion of what you're doing too. Dealing with spam, however, is a topic for another day.)

Wouldn't it be nice if you had someone to sort your email for you? Show you the email that's most important to you first? Perhaps even collect all those email newsletters for you to read and peruse later, when you had the time? Perhaps even completely filter out the email that you simply don't want to see?

Well, you already have such an assistant.

Inbox Rules.