About two weeks ago I did a slight adjustment to my mail reading approach. So far it has served me really well and thus I’d like to document it.
The basic approach is that I want a clean inbox. My inbox it should only include known good mail. This is opposite to the traditional approach which is to have mails in the inbox which are not known to be bad. A slight but important difference.
So for now I have created a rule in Mail.app which looks like this:
So if I don’t know the sender and the mail is not addressed to my full name, it gets moved to a separate folder.
Then to read my mail I go to the inbox which I know to be good. Then from time to time I’ll check my “Dubious” folder plus the Junk folder.
There are two possible changes which I’m still considering:
- Instead of a “Dubious” folder I might move it directly into the Junk folder
- Or the reverse: I could turn of the junk mail filter completely and just rely on my “Dubious” folder.
Do you have any mail hacks that you could share? Any improvements you can suggest?