Triagemail.com
We all get overwhelmed with communication channels, from IM to phone calls, but the worst offender is email. Some people get hundreds of legitimate emails a day. This is already on top of the unwanted spam! So how do we make the most out of cutting through email to inbox zero and getting to only the messages that need attention. When the inbox gets too long, then it is time for email triage.
Triage is a medical term used to describe desperate situations where the doctor needs to make snap decisions that are not always in an individual's best interest, but in the interest of the catastrophe at hand. When performing triage in a medical emergency all patients fall into 1 of 4 categories. Your inbox is no different, each message can be acted upon in 1 of the same 4 ways.
How does triage help me control my email?
Triage does NOT help you control your email, it is a last ditch effort once the situation has gotten so bad there is nothing more to do than to sacrifice some messages just to get everything under control. The problem with login into your traditional email client to deal with messages is that it offers you too many distractions. People tend to do a first pass over their, now spiraling out of control inbox, for messages to delete. Then messages they can ignore and easily file away. Then for messages that can wait. Finally, after potentially hours of busy work, your focus can finally rest on the important messages. If these messages are so important and urgent, then why did you waste all that time before getting to them?
Triagemail is simple. You are presented with 1 and only 1 message at a time. You need to make a snap judgement and put every message into 1 of 4 categories. First option, delete. You are simply deleting a message - it was pointless and it just wastes your time. Second option, act. This forces you to reply the message before you can move-on and see others. Third option, defer. This skips the current message. It is not important immediately, but you will want to find it when the triage session is over. Fourth option, ignore. This takes the message and marks it as 'read' so the next time you login to your email client it is available, but not competing for your attention.
I am overwhelmed by email, how can I begin to triage?
I have tried to make this script as simple as possible so it can be run just about anywhere. It is a single PHP file, so just drop it on your own server and you are ready to go. There might be a hosted version, but there would be no way around password anti-pattern without yet another account to create.
Download
The project is hosted on google code and the most recent version can always be synced via svn. Your IMAP server and/or PHP setup might cause silent errors, so until this is tested throughly, this is available 'as is' please report any issues and suggestions on the project page.
About
This is a small seed of an idea by Brian Suda.