I think I use email quite efficiently. I'm sharing some of those thoughts. This is sevitzdotcom's guide to email and this is Part 1. There are 7 parts
- Why you should have 3 email addresses
- Why you should have your own domain
- Why you should use server side email
- Why you should use Google for Applications (gmail for your domain)
- How to set it up Google for Applications
- Setting up mail on your iPhone and Mail.App Correctly
- Smart folders and ways to manage your email
I'm still amazed at how many people I know use their work email address as their sole email address. Or failing that, at least their primary one.
When I see this I always think "Are you crazy". Some people think crazy is putting pineapple on a pizza. For other people it's going out mountain biking in the middle of winter in the mud and rain. For me it's using your work email address for personal mail.
Unless your work blocks other emails or is particularly restrictive, (and I'll cover this later) there should be no reasons to do this. Stop it. Stop it now. It's a awful habit.
You should have two clear and distinct email address's. One for work, and one for personal. (I'll get into the third later on).
Do not give your work email address to your friends. Do not give your personal address to work people. Keep them very separate and distinct.
The advantages of this are as follows - When you change jobs (and you will) no one needs to update their address books - The countless "Hi everyone I'm changing jobs, this is my new address" emails I get are ridiculous. You shouldn't need to do this. And every time you do you create a set of people who wont be able to contact you because you'll miss people out. Granted you may not care about most of them, but is it worth it for the ones you mistakenly don't update?
You can switch off one to focus on the other
- By having two email accounts, you can turn one off. The amount of people who don't like checking email out of work ours because they don't want to deal with work issue again is silly. This is not the same as just not wanting to check email outside work ours, which I get even if I don't understand. By having two email accounts, you can choose to focus on work during the day or personal on the weekend. Having this choice gives you flexibility, and flexibility allows you the option of focusing on what's important at the time. Not having two email accounts takes away this useful option
People understand the best way to get hold of you.
- Tying back into the last point a bit, if you have one email address and I mail you in the evening, will you get it? I don't know? What happens if I need to send you something on the weekend? If you have two email addresses but use them indiscriminately/interchangably should I cc both? This just makes for more admin on both sides. Being clear and having clear lines of communications helps everyone.
I guess my points can be summed up as follows
Have two email address. Keep them clear. * This helps you manage the your email better * This helps other people communicate with you better
I think a lot of people don't care about helping other people manage their communications with them better. Which I think is partly a selfish attitude and partly because at that point it's not effecting them.
Email however is a very important communication mechanism these days. The more we can do to help each other user it better, the better it works for everyone. Like obeying the unwritten rules of road etiquette, it just makes the system work better.
But even if you don't care about others, the ability to separate and manage work from personal separately has got to be beneficial. For me this is blindingly obvious and should be to everyone.
I understand some companies block access to anything that isn't their own email, under the misguided notion that this will make people more efficient. It doesn't and it wont. Anyway that's a debate for another blog post. I'll be honest, you have fewer options here, and it does make life harder. I would still have two email address, and have the personal one forward emails to work. I'd also campaign against this stupidity. It doesn't work.
Finally the third email address. This isn't as important as the first two but I would suggest will again help you manage your email more clearly. I suggest that people have an email account called "signups" or "newsletters" or "other" or something like that to separate out all the automated systems that send you emails from actual friends sending you emails. This again helps you manage your email from the flood of crap we all now get. I would leave email address people might search for you on (say facebook) as your personal email address, but I would change the address you use in amazon to this other email address. When I cover gmail later on I'll talk more about this.
1. Gert
I agree.
I have several separate email addresses. One for newsgroups, one for things like Amazon, and one for blogging, as well as a personal one, and a personal one for OH. I had hoped that the personal one wouldn’t get spammed, but then some kind well-meaning person sent me an e-Christmas card and the spam began…My partner’s has never been spammed!
I do know people who have only a work email address and that is because they don’t have a home PC, but I still think having a separate personal one should apply, for the reasons you state. I am on several mailing lists that people join from their workplace and they don’t even bother with the personal mail disclaimer. If I did that, I think I would probably get a warning, at least.
Even if a work network blocks auto forwarding of email addresses - I don’t know if ours does, I’ve never tried - generally they will allow access to web interface. So I use Thunderbird to read them at home but I can access them at work should I wish.
In Thunderbird I sort mail into, among others, blogstuff, yahoo groups/Listserv, Google Alerts, and solicited mass mailings.
2. Matt
Shouldn’t you also have a 4th email address, for porn? :-)
3. Marc
Instead of the third e-mail I use spamgourmet which allows me to create unique e-mails on the fly when I sign up for anything. The beauty of it is that I can either switch them off from sending any more mails or let the counter run down so it happens automatically after x number of e-mails. Even better is that if they do pass on the e-mail but I want to still receive mails from the original site I can limit it so that I only get e-mails from their domain.
4. Adrian
I think what spamgourmet does and what I’m suggesting as a use for the third email are different.
For genuine third email things (e.g. amazon) I wouldn’t want to use some like spamgourmet, and I think that it adds an extra layer of faff, and risk/dependance. For protecting yourself from spam it does however have value. Although gmails spam filtering is pretty good, so for me this is now less of an issue.
The third email address is about making managing emails easier, and keeping emails which aren’t from actual people in a different mailbox, so it doesn’t clutter up your main mailbox.
You could use spamgourmet with this if you wanted, or as when I talk about using gmail, I’ll highlight how you can achieve this functionality (more or less) from within the gmail mailbox itself using nicknames, plus addressing and filters (depending on what you want to achieve)
5. cian
The third email address is like the third nipple. Slightly redundant, not many people have one but it gets erect when it’s cold.
6. Andrew
Disagree, horses for courses.
I did use one email address for everything and was able to filter out work and personal as required, it meant my personal email was available by blackberry and was supported with higher SLA’s than I would get through a personal account.
It also meant I didn’t have to make a clear distinction between work and personal “people” - I don’t like (or need to) categorise people into little boxes in my life.
The only benefit I see for people like me to use two is that it stops people like you complaining that I don’t have two.
7. Adrian
I do recall you saying at one point that your job was
“Fire up email and wait for the onslaught” and that mail to your work Account would go ignored as you just had too much to deal with.
The distinction is less between work people and personal people, as between work context emails and personal context emails. In most cases the differentiator is by person anyway.
8. nrgza
I agree with everything you’ve said - I don’t mix personal and work where possible (unavoidable when you work with friends as it can overlap of course) and keep a separate hotmail account for everything other than friends and family.
I remember when you pointed out once that when I comment on your blog, I could leave my personal email address rather than my spam one and you seemed quite offended when I was adamant - EVERYTHING other than friends and family gets sent to hotmail doom for me to pick through about once a week.
Lastly, a friend lost her job due to the contents of a personal email her bosses found she’d sent from work, at the end of last year. They were looking for a reason to fire her, and she basically gift-wrapped it for them. I think we’d all like to think our bosses are reasonable people and that we don’t send any email that could be misconstrued… but I wouldn’t chance it at all.