Bacn - it's not spam!
“Who doesn’t like bacon?”
Here's one of those stupid little things, that made a leap to my productivity.
Like you, I'm signed up to dozens of email lists (travel, food, knowledge.)
But I don't want it polluting my inbox. So I have a bacn rule.
Bacn is spam that you want.
I took all of those newsletters, cool info stuff that I get all the time (after all, I signed up for it!) and send it to it's own mailbox. Automatically.
I'm using Apple Mail, hers's a screenshot of how it started. Anything with "noreply" was the first rule. As I got other email, I added it to the rule, now none of my bacn is in my main mailbox
If Any recipient has noreply, it's bacn!
Two great tools for email: Mail Act-on & Mail Tags
Like many people out there, I struggled to stay on top of my e-mail. The fact is as I get more and more e-mails–some that I want, some that require me to do things, with the main problem that it takes my brain to process all of his.
2 tools that I use that I would be lost without–MailTags and Mail ActOn. Both of these products are from indev.ca
Mail tags–is the simple idea of “tagging” e-mails. once that you can add tags, you can build smart mailboxes from the stacks. It has a project feature that I don't really understand, and therefore don't use.
But tagging? Tagging I get.
I tag e-mails based on licensing, priority, specific clients, family–the ideas just that I can have more than one tag on a piece of e-mail.
And it's easy to build smart mailboxes based on the tags. All of it is also indexed by spotlight.
Get the idea?
Part 2 of the puzzle: Mail ActOn.
It's a tool that gives me an overlay (and Apple's mail) allows me to assign actions based on the keystroke.
Mail Act On
For example, I like to batch process all my e-mails so I can deal with the quote important ones”. So I take a look at my inbox, press F2, and then press the number 2–which is assigned to the rule “longer than 2 min.”
She was a great general feeling about e-mail–in fact, most of the items that you consider “to do”–if it takes you longer than 2 min., then you should just do it.
Let's pretty simple–something comes in, acquires quick response–you respond. But wait a 2nd, not all that e-mail that takes longer than 2 min.?
That's what I want talking about 2 tools: MailTags and mail ActOn
Three email tips/Do you really have to send that email?
I love the flowchart from here : OnlineITDegree.net TL;DR? Basically, we're drowning in email. 20+ hrs a week worth. That halves your efficiency, and it's brutal as a 'creative.'
Most of the people I know (including you if you read this) already are aware that email is killing us all.
There were three good things that I want to mention from it (one that I already do.)
- NNTR - No Need to Respond. In the Subject line.
- EOM - End of Message. Again, write your subject with EOM
- 3 sentence rule (which I'm going to amend as the 5 sentence rule , which is how I encountered it first.) Mostly, just see if See if you can keep your email under 5 sentences.
Imagine if everyone adopted these rules!
Just the flowchart alone saved one company 20% of the time.