AuburnCom Weblog

Whenever you next find yourself penning an email in Mail, a script in Textedit, or a message in iChat, try tapping the “Escape” key halfway through the word you’re typing, you’ll see a drop down list of words that OS X has fetched from the Oxford American Dictionary, selecting one of these and tapping the “Return” key will save you a few seconds and also ensure your spelling is correct.

This technique will even expand your vocabulary and may win you your next game of Scrabble.

Matt Cutts gave a great talk at wordcamp on Saturday, regarding Whitehat Search engine optimization. I checked his blog today to find what else he’s been writing about and he has written a good piece where he explains that rmail has been taking too much of his time and gives some examples of how he’s been trying to manage it, many of these will be useful for you if you’re just starting to think about more carefully managing your email.

I’ve tried all kinds of tricks to reduce the email load:
- I archive any mailing list that I don’t really need in my inbox.
- I try to check email fewer times during the day.
- I write replies to emails, then save them as drafts for a while before replying, so I don’t get stuck in a cycle of replying, getting a response, and quickly emailing again.

This week (with a little prodding from a friend), I realized that it’s still not working. I’m barely keeping my head above water, email-wise. I need a different approach. I can see a couple options:

1. Go “lossy.” Let a few emails drop on the floor. I’m already doing this from time to time, like when someone emails out of the blue asking for an interview or something that would take too long.
2. For emails from outside Google, shard the workload and ask for help.