I enjoy practicing law, but like many professions, it can consume as much time as you allow. For example, this past Saturday, I worked on an appellate brief to avoid the Monday–Friday distractions of meetings, calls, and emails. I am proud of how the brief turned out, but after working for most of a Saturday, the last thing that I wanted to do was waste the remaining weekend time. Whether you practice law or work in another field, I suspect that you can relate. One way to reclaim time is to reduce tasks that needlessly erode your day. Managing a crowded inbox is one of those tasks, and this is where Sanebox can make a difference.
Although I use SaneBox across multiple accounts, I’ll focus today on my primary personal email account: Gmail. Over the years, I’ve used my Gmail address for countless purchases and subscriptions, so it receives a high volume of marketing messages and newsletters in addition to personal correspondence. Many of these messages are not spam; many are from vendors I actually use, and timely promotions can be useful. However, before adopting SaneBox, the sheer number of incoming emails was often overwhelming, making it difficult to know where to begin. I would sometimes dread looking at my Gmail inbox because it was going to suck up so much of my time.
With SaneBox, that inbox overload is largely a thing of the past. My inbox typically contains fewer than ten messages when I check it, which makes it simple to identify priority items, take action, and move on. The resulting efficiency gains are significant.
Periodically, I review my @SaneNews folder, where SaneBox automatically routes less time-sensitive messages such as newsletters and bulk communications. I do want to see many of these messages—just not immediately. Because SaneBox moves them to @SaneNews, I can review them when I’m ready. Gmail’s bulk-selection tools let me click one button to select them all, then I can unclick selected emails to retain the few I want and remove the rest by tapping the trash can icon. This process would be far more burdensome if these messages were mixed with all of the messages that matter to me in my main inbox, so acting on them this way in my @SaneNews folder is a huge help.
Less frequently, I review the @SaneLater folder, which generally contains lower-priority items: often marketing messages that aren’t spam but are close. I use the same triage approach that I just described with my @SaneNews. In mere seconds, I have eliminated the emails I don’t want, leaving just the ones that I want to keep.
The end result is a materially easier workflow in Gmail. Priority items are easy to locate, and nonessential messages are simple to dismiss.
All of this works because SaneBox classifies messages. It does so without reading the content of the messages; it is all done based on the sender and the subject line (which is great for privacy). In my experience, SaneBox generally classifies messages accurately. On the rare occuasion when it misfiles something—placing a message in @SaneLater that belongs in @SaneNews or the main inbox—simply drag that email to the correct folder. That action trains SaneBox to handle future messages from the same sender appropriately.
If you want to try out SaneBox to see what a huge difference it can make in your life, click here to get a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. If you don’t like having a clean and tidy Inbox and decide to return to how you had it before, no sweat. But if you appreciate having a better way of working with email, using this link in this post will give you a generous $25 credit when you pick a plan—and there are lots of different plans to chose from, so can select the one that gives you just what you want.
Thanks to SaneBox for sponsoring iPhone J.D. And a special thanks to SaneBox for creating more time in my day.
