Email Is Never Easy
It’s a common, erroneous complaint that electronic communication is impersonal; conventional wisdom is that a handwritten letter somehow conveys more information than an email of the same length. The people who espouse this view often claim “you can’t seal an email with a loving kiss”, which suggests they aren’t aware that there’s bound to be an app for exactly that sooner or later, or that the acronym for that act – “S.W.A.L.K” – was essentially the wartime equivalent of ‘lol’ – just as impersonal.
The reality is that email is often the primary mode of communication for a working journalist (when they’re not meeting sources in pubs, ostensibly for the sake of the scoop but really because pubs are where alcohol lives). It’s an incredibly versatile means of communication, with Google Alerts and mass PR releases using the same channels as intimate one-on-one conversations for vastly different purposes. However, this versatility comes with a cost: Managing one (or often many more) account can quickly become confusing and time-consuming, hampering a journalist’s efficacy.
Handily, there are many apps and browser extensions that streamline your inbox, turning you into a lean and efficient communicator. Install any of the following free apps into your browser and see your productivity rise exponentially.
Email Efficiency Tools
ActiveInbox
The standard Gmail inbox is a Jack-Of-All-Trades – not great at any one thing but good enough at everything that it’s a perfectly viable choice. It does, however, suffer from the Hiatus Hassle effect, where taking a slight break from checking it means that the sheer number of emails marked as ‘unread’ spirals into the hundreds and remains there, as going back through all of them becomes too arduous a task to face.
The ActiveInbox extension solves this problem by installing options that make it easier to manage individual email. In addition to the appreciated extra options like the ability to minimise the Google search bar at the top or a shortcut to send yourself a file without having to open a self-addressed email, it also encourages you to select an ‘action’ or ‘waiting on’ button and then specify a time frame for that action, so no important email will ever slip through the cracks again. It also keeps track of how many conversations with the same group you’ve had, and which need actioning. It also allows you to create projects and add notes to each email. A good (if slightly out of date) introductory video to the extension can be found here.
Multiple Account Checker
Another minor irritation about Gmail is that its default method of checking multiple accounts requires you to switch between tabs. It’s hardly the end of the world but when tab-space becomes a premium as you work on a project that requires a lot to be open, it makes micromanaging that much harder.
It also allows you to open individual emails, as seen on the left.
Multiple Account Checker allows you to have a single tab with individual windows for each Gmail account open concurrently. It makes it much easier to open the tab, quickly scan your email accounts, then return to your current task. As a downside, it no longer discriminates between the Inbox, Social and Promotional sections that Gmail now subdivides content into as standard, but as a plus it displays beautiful Flickr photos when you refresh, so you’ll be seeing a lot more sunsets and pelicans from now on.
Boomerang
Despite the advent of ubiquitous mobile Internet no matter how hard you try there will be times when you simply cannot send an email at an appropriate, desired time. The Boomerang extension for Firefox and Chrome allows you to schedule an email to be sent at a time and date of your choice. Though the obvious application is for sending a birthday or holiday greeting email, there are also times when it would be more politic for you to appear to have been up early to send an email rather than, as is often the case, writing it at 4am then sleeping in till noon.
Gamefication
Some apps attempt to break the hassle barrier of managing an inbox by turning the process into a game. They run the gamut from the extremely simple to more elaborate scenarios. However they all also notably introduce a timed element to the process, which essentially limits the amount of time you can spend on the process. Unfortunately, while they all potentially increase the quantity of emails you deal with, the quality of your responses is likely to severely decrease, and the Email Game in particular is focused on reducing your inbox to zero, a state of grace which is effectively impossible.
As with everything, managing your email requires a level of time and investment that can be difficult to reconcile with being truly productive; the above tools should hopefully help you find a happy balance.
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