Email Taxonomy for the Chronically Overwhelmed
Don’t call it a comeback
It’s been a while since my last blog post. 6 years. In that time we welcomed our second child into this world, I moved between three jobs, and released more albums with my band than blog posts. Six years for a blog is a long time. In standard software developer fashion, the Ruby based blogging engine I was using (Middleman) has aged like my back and I’m eyeing a Hugo rebuild like it’s a fancy new standing desk.
A lot has changed in that time, the “agentic AI” buzzwords hadn’t been created, and LLMs couldn’t write this post in a few minutes. (For the time being, this can’t be done without my flavour of dad jokes and parentheses humour).
Easing back into blogging, I figured I would start with a email, a topic out of my zettelkasten (or whatever this hodgepodge of notes are called).
Me and my Inbox (got something going on)
I have been trying to Marie Kondo my inbox for a long time. But the reality for a hoarder like me is that I hold onto junk that brings me little happiness. Some emails are like my childhood clothes that I’ve kept for keepsakes. I’ve got receipts from 2017 in the off chance I’ll need them, and notifications for bake sales from my kids’ school from two years ago.
The breakthrough came when I realised I should stop caring about what the sender wants me to do with the email, and start asking what I need from it. Revolutionary. (I realize this might be obvious to some of you)
Based on this logic, I view an email slotting in one of five purposes. Each purpose helps determine how an email is sorted and processed.
Action Required
These are emails that need me to do something (make a decision, perform a task, or respond to unblock someone else).
Awaiting/Delegated
These are emails that I’ve already acted on and are now pending input or feedback from another party. I keep them around to help me avoid rereading the initial email thinking it was new. I also don’t want to get rid of them because I might need to act on the item again (sending a followup reminder, etc.).
Time-Sensitive Low-Effort
These are messages needing minimal, usually quick responses (like meeting confirmation links or single-click approvals). I batch these for when I’m waiting for a CI build to finish or sitting my by the foot of my daughter’s bed waiting for her to fall asleep (because there are monsters under her bed).
Reference/Context
Informational emails that I might need to refer to later like invoices, receipts, school notifications, etc. These do not require immediate action.
General Noise/Broadcast
All the mass communication messages that don’t require action and are mostly just informational “noise”. Think promotions, newsletters, announcements.
Great, so my emails should theoretically fall into one of five purposes. But (like a chaotic highway interchange) everything still lands in my inbox first where newsletters rub shoulders with AWS outage alerts. Once an email has been “processed,” it needs to clear the road and move into its designated bucket.
This moves me to the next stage. With a clear purpose, it’s been easier to understand how to organize these emails and move them right along. Once an email has been “processed” by me, it needs to be organised. Like a busy highway, the goal is to keep my inbox as clear as possible and move stuff into buckets.
The Purposes help me process; the Buckets help me organize.
The Bucket List
As with any of us who has created an inbox rule, we realize that some emails don’t belong in our inboxes. So what other folders or buckets do I require besides my inbox? Well… Welcome to my neuroses workflow.
The buckets are optimised based on my energy level. These are varied based on my time availability and emotional commitment/state. For example, a morning news summary from a news agency is not consumed the same way as a weekly email containing long-form in-depth pieces. While they are both “news”, I generally only have about 5-15 minutes to consume my morning news. Also, morning news updates are like bananas, yellow and urgent for about 12 hours, then quickly becoming compost.
To help identify a bucket, each bucket has an associated question. Ideally, the questions are clear enough that only one of them answers with a yes.
So, without any further ado, here are my buckets with the associated question. If you are constructing a similar system of your own, your buckets and questions are likely different.
Black Hole
“I never want to see this email.”
These are emails I never want to see, and are likely to be deleted or archived. We all got emails like this in our inbox (e.g. a random events promoter who promised you free entry for an email address, or that annoying ex). It’s the only bucket which doesn’t have a question, but rather a definitive statement for this bucket.
Broadcast
“Can I safely ignore this indefinitely?”
Low-importance, high-volume notifications that can be safely ignored. These also include updates which are only useful for a short period (like CI status updates).
Causes
“Will this email make me remortgage my house to help build another children’s hospital?”
Emails from non-profit organizations or requiring action like donating or volunteering. There is usually an emotional (and sometimes financial) cost to engaging with these.
Export (Archive)
“Does this need to exist outside of email or might I need this as evidence in the near future?”
*Destination: A folder structure so Byzantine it would make a librarian weep, or whatever document management system you’re pretending to maintain.
Staging area for emails that must be moved elsewhere (e.g., tax receipts, event tickets, receipts, mortgage info). Ideally these are exported to a searchable destination.
Listings
“Is this an event/pasttime that I would like to participate in at a future date?”
Discovery-based emails, often related to local events, kids’ activities or signups.
News Daily
“Do I want to spend 5 to 15 minutes staying current right now?”
High-frequency updates for quick, focused reading. These tend to be daily news agency morning updates.
News Others
“Do I want to sit with this when I have more time and learn?”
Low-frequency, longer-form updates for deeper, less frequent reading. A mix of current and tech news agencies (looking at you Changelog).
Political
“Is this an email trying to make me exercise my democratic right (and probably spend an extra $20)?”
Emails from political groups, campaigns, or advocacy organizations. They tend to be very relevant during an election campaign, or when there is a coordinated effort to enact change. Like causes, they tend to have a financial and emotional cost to it.
Promotions
“Will this email make me poorer by filling my house with useless plastic?”
Commercial offers and sales, optimized for occasional browsing. Helping keep my dollars and cents in my pocket.
This is the end, the end, my friend, the end
(Of the post, not the comeback. I’ve got at least six more years of sporadic content planned.)
For this system to be successful, I have a set of rules to move around emails. These could be Gmail filters or something like SaneBox. Because I’m a dork, I built my own !!!shameless plug warning!!!.
Groom your folders regularly, or you’ll end up with a “News Daily” folder containing 2,000 unread messages from 2019. Not that I’d know anything about that.
That’s all folks.