From the Archives: Email

So, how many emails have you received today? How many have you sent? Email is an important tool for communicating with others and for getting things done — but it can also be a source of frustration and overload. Here are some posts from the archives about how to better manage your inbox.

General Practices

When, how, and why do you check and respond to email?

• I recommend some techniques for becoming more mindful about how you respond to email and its place in your day’s priorities in Is Email Checking You?
• In  Developing an Electronic Communication Policy, Ethan suggests requiring students to include a salutation and specific course information in all emails, and communicating to them his policies about reponse time.
• Jason reflects on his Worse Practices for Email in order to make some improvements.
• Jason asks an important question: How Many Email Accounts is Too Many?
• Sending out an important email only to have it overlooked can be frustrating. So George explains How to Email an Event Announcement.
• Jason says Email is Not a Tool for Revision, suggesting that Google Docs or wikis offer better spaces for collaboration.

Gmail

Since many on the ProfHacker team use Google tools, we’ve written quite a bit about Gmail:

• Amy explains mail forwarding, mail fetching, and infinite email addresses in   Three Ways to Use GMail as Your Only Email Destination.
• George explains how he filters and manages student messages in Gmail.
• Brian explains how and why you might be interested in Using Gmail and Google Calendar Offline.
• Heather explains how to set up  Custom Signatures in Gmail.
• Brian explains Signing In to Multiple Google Accounts.

Managing the flow of email to your Gmail box is a focus for several posts, including:

• Amy on Using Filters to Manage Your Inbox
• Julie on Using Gmail’s Priority Inbox
• Kathleen on Clean Out Your Inbox with Taskforce

Apples Only

George tells Mac users how to use Apple Tools to hack your inbox.

Guest author Meaghan Timney explains Using Mailplane to Manage Multiple GMail Accounts

Back Up Your Email

I included some suggestions for backing up your email in How to Back Up Your Cloud and Amy explains how Mac users can back up campus mail accounts using Gmail.

Finally, if you’ve been using your email account to backup your documents, Jason recommends another ProfHacker favorite, Dropbox, in Stop Emailing Files to Yourself.

What are your biggest frustrations with email? What are your best solutions?  Let us know in the comments!

[Creative Commons licensed image by Flickr user Tim Morgan]