From: Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk>
To: Bill Jarrold <wjarrold@ucdavis.edu>
Cc: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
Subject: Re: automatically convert email inbox into TODO's?
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2011 23:47:16 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87lj2d2517.fsf@pinto.chemeng.ucl.ac.uk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <BC2207E3-BDD6-4235-986F-42693DD047E1@ucdavis.edu> (Bill Jarrold's message of "Thu, 20 Jan 2011 23:16:00 -0800")
Bill Jarrold <wjarrold@ucdavis.edu> writes:
> Hi,
>
> Emails in ones inbox can be viewed as TODO's.
[...]
I can't help you in your question of converting emails to TODOs but I
can say that some (including myself) will argue that using emails as a
todo list is the wrong thing to do and leads to disaster (as I think you
are finding if you have 1000s of emails sitting there).
2 or so years ago, I was in the same situation. When I hit >2000
"emails as todo items" in my inbox, I knew something was wrong. I
switched to a 0 inbox approach with org mode. Every email is processed
when I read it. Most get dismissed (and I use gnus which automatically
expires my emails with an expiry period that depends on what folder the
messages are in); the ones that require action are either handled
immediately (by doing something and responding) or are converted to an
org todo item by simply highlighting the whole message ("h C-x h" in
gnus) and doing an org capture with a todo type (C-c c t).
The key, however, is to ensure you have a good automated mail splitting
approach which means you only have to read the emails you expect to read
at any particular time. I use gnus to split my incoming mail but I used
to use procmail and then maildrop. Mail gets sorted into a number of
folders (~6) including workplace ones, mailing lists (like this one),
hobbies, family, etc.
Anyway, I hope some of this helps. It has helped me: my mail folders
now typically have a handful of "ticked" emails acting as todo items
(there is always the odd exception to any set of rules...) but no more.
Org is necessary for this and I couldn't have moved to this approach
without it.
cheers,
eric
--
: Eric S Fraga (GnuPG: 0xC89193D8FFFCF67D) in Emacs 24.0.50.1
: using Org-mode version 7.4 (release_7.4.231.ge879)
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2011-01-21 23:47 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 3+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2011-01-21 7:16 automatically convert email inbox into TODO's? Bill Jarrold
2011-01-21 23:47 ` Eric S Fraga [this message]
2011-01-21 23:48 ` Bernt Hansen
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