***Begin Quote***
— In MyLinkedinPowerForum@yahoogroups.com,
“Reinke’s Networking Persona” <V2Y2R0N27RHJ6Y@…> wrote:
<snip>
If any one is interested, I’d be glad to walk you thru the
process or answer any questions.
<snip>
>Ferdinand (Fjohn),
>This is a new approach to me.
>
>Thanks for sharing it with us.
>
>I’d certainly welcome hearing more about it.
>
{Extraneous Deleted}
>Good to have you with us.
>
>Thanks,
>Vincent Wright
>www.VincentWright.com
***End Quote***
Well that is an “interesting challenge”, what is my approach to email? And, remember you asked for this ramble.
First, I recognize that email is a tool that been abused, perverted, and abused from its original intent. I think, assume, and guess that the intent was the electronic substitution for a letter. Since then, we have seen the electronic equivalent of junk mail, chain letters, and a garbage dump. I too am guilty of having one email account where I just send copies of everything. To reinforce that bad habit, Google now allows me to search it. Arghh, gag me.
So what is my approach?
Basically I’m a fan of Getting Things Done, because I don’t. So I recognize that most of my data, information, knowledge and wisdom comes in via email.
I am experimenting with RSS as a replacement for the one way information flow that is currently represented by email newsletters but it’s a work in progress.
So, here we have a flood of messages with a varying degree of value. It’s just me, like the Dutch Boy sticking his finger in the dike, to allocate time and attention among these competing interests.
So first, I recognized that just like a giant salami, you can’t consume it by just gnawing on it. It has to be “sliced” into manageable portions. So, it seemed logical to divide my inbound email into accounts by topical interest. For example, in no particular order, College Alumni activities, Personal Networking, Liberty, High School Alumni, Work, Family, Technology, Friends, Blogging, WebPage, Consulting, Gunz, etc. etc. More about prioritization later.
One thing that I learned was that I have a bunch of demands that exceed my capability. So I ruthlessly prune based on “value”. I’m NOW very careful what I get into.
Another think I learned is that spam and signal to noise issues need to be addressed. I now have “public”, “semi-public”, “private”, and “internal use only” email accounts. (Ain’t gmail great. And all the other free email providers.) “Public” is obvious; it’s on documents, resumes, and such. It gets heavily spammed from time to time. “Internal Use Only” are email accounts that I use privately and never ever disclose. Why?
OK here’s a digression. You can take a public email account, forward it to an “Internal Use Only” gmail account, and then pick that up in your mail reader for your real use. Make sure you sanitize the settings like “reply to” so that they point to that real public email account. Don’t want to confuse people. Once a week (Sunday morning), I go check these accounts online for a misidentified good stuff ided as spam. It happens maybe once or twice a week. If spam slips thru, I go to the Gmail account and identify it as such. (You wondered why GMail has such good spam filters that quickly id the junk. They have a grazillion people like me doing the heavy lifting for them.) It eliminates most, but not all, the trash. This makes spam the exception rather than the rule. Last time I studied it, I think that 900 messages were reduced to 200 “good” by GMail. Of those, 6 were spam that slipped thru. So I don’t worry about spam on public addresses much at all any more. Thanks Google.
So, to recap, I have public1 that forwards to internal1 and is picked up in LookOut (Microsoft Outlook does strange things. So I call it LookOut to remind me about assumptions!) and stuffed into a mailbox “PTY01 – PUBLIC XYZ@YAHOO”.
Semi-public are the ones, like this one used in forums or certain websites. Everyone “learns” that I am a strange duck, and will ruthlessly abandon NEHW9YRN56359O if I need to. Again, when you are using reply, or at worst cut ‘n’ paste, most people could care less if I am NEHW9YRN56359O, 87U92IDOWIR2ZD, BIGFOOTYETI @ SOMEWHERE DOT COM.
So eventually every email account maps into its own LookOut mail folder that reflects its priority, purpose, and source.
Another divergence! Since I give each financial institution I deal with (Five) a unique email address for “me”, phishing attempts are laughable. If I get a PayPal “security alert” on any email account other than it’s dedicated account, then I can just quickly mark it as junk. If the years I have been using this strategy and its predecessors, I have NEVER had a phish on a private email account. SO I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Seems an obvious fix to me.
Back to my activities list, I allocate my email time by just working down the folder list top to bottom. So my work activities get done before my alumni ones BECAUSE its email folder is closer to the top o the list. Crude but effective. LookOut rules automagically sort traffic into the appropriate folders. I even have LookOut rules that for example if a relative uses the “wrong” email address, LookOut will put it where it belongs. And, yes, I have one for inlaws and one for my relatives. No comment which is higher!
So my email strategy is to use automation and free accounts to be more productive.
Hope this explains me, my approach, and why I need to adjust my tin foil hat from time to time.
Fjohn
Reinke Faces Life 