Ahhh– the right email filter at the right time

Sometimes a tiny adjustment can make a huge difference.

Example: I have a backup email address where copies of emails that I might otherwise miss are routed. Recently, I started using this backup email address for other things as well– a new use case.

The problem, however, was that suddenly I couldn’t see the new use case emails because my attention was drowned out by the copies of all the other emails.

PLUS, I now had to process each email twice— once in my main address and then “select + mark as read = enter” on the backup email address.  This was pointless busy work.

Solution: I opened up the filter rules on the backup and simply added “mark as read” to all the incoming backup copies.

Now I’ll only have to process the original copy, but will still have an archive and a backup in case I miss something.

I did this just minutes ago, but already my stress has decreased since every time I look at that email address I don’t see 47 new messages (I get a lot of email).

Little tweak, big impact.