Email is good.

“Report Spam & Unsubscribe” Gmail, notably, offers this feature. I squirm a little every time I see it. If an email is spam, meaning the sender is a criminal, “unsubscribing” means hitting the criminals servers with a request. Why would a criminal honor that request? In fact, wouldn’t a criminal note this request as “ah […]

Kind of a genius move from Google to get the biggest name in organizing your life to endorse Google file products. It’s really just fluffy nonsense. Set a goal to process emails daily. Yes, sure, OK. Can-do. The rest of it is just showing you basic surface-level features that already exist, like search. Still, it’s […]

Kelly isn’t alone: I take declaring email bankruptcy to mean removing 100% of everything from one’s inbox, status be damned. Unread? Read but not replied to? Doesn’t matter, it’s gone. I’ve rarely hear anyone say it pained them to do it. It’s always liberating or otherwise a good feeling. Hey, I ain’t gonna yuck anyone’s […]

Twitter DMs are… ok? You have some level of control over them (on or off for randos) and are, speaking for myself, decently spam moderated. The value I find in them is that people tend to check them, and if I’m trying to reach someone I know from Twitter, it’s a natural choice. But they […]

People are drawing this connection. Bastian Allgeier: Mastodon is in many ways similar to email. It’s not just one big platform. There are different servers (instances) and you can choose your home. My first email address was a freenet.de address back in the 90s. A horrible cheap German provider. I moved to various email addresses […]

I blogged this over a decade ago, probably as I was starting to be annoyed at how poor introductory emails can be. Let me update and repost the template here: As I read that I’m like, yep, that’s what I want to get. AND YET. Maybe not. Plenty of random business spam follows pretty much […]

I think Brian is saying: Woah woah woah, back off with your demands, email. Whoever is sending this to me is essentially warning me they are a problem in my life. He might be right. But context matters! If it’s spam or spam-like, meh, who cares, take steps to not get email from that source […]

When a boss sends a report an email, the power dynamic there says “I expect this to be answered.” When a salesperson sends an email pitching their product or service, the power dynamic is on the potential customer’s side. I’ll answer this if I care to. Sometimes it’s not the role, but the size of […]

I kinda laughed at this Delta ad I saw while walking down a jetbridge to a plane the other day. Not zero emails in the inbox, not zero tasks left to complete, you should buy the plane wifi just so you can click on each email and make sure it goes from Unread to read. […]

Inbox When Ready is a clever idea. It’s almost like saving you from yourself. Say you have your Gmail tab open all day (like uh, this guy). This doesn’t force you to stop that habit, or from writing a new email, but it prevents you from seeing the actual inbox part and being distracted by […]