Priority Inbox, hurray
February 17, 2011
This just in… I moved to gmail’s priority inbox. We haven’t officially moved to the Google app engine, but we were given some test accounts to work with. So I just moved everything over. It’s very simple to do and you won’t regret it. Here is how I moved over in what seems to be a very seamless transition so far:
- Create a redirect rule (not a forward rule). The difference is in how the email will appear in your gmail inbox. You don’t want all your email’s to have the “FW:” appended to the subject line.
- Move the rule to the bottom of all other rules. A redirect rule is a server rule and you’ll want to make sure that it is the last rule applied before the redirect. This ensures that the 40 or so other filters that I currently have will stay intact.
- Export your contacts to a CSV file. (File > Import and Export > Export to a file).
- Import your contacts to your gmail account (contacts > import > choose file)
The next step is to train the priority inbox. You won’t have to do this for very long because it’s smart. Be diligent about marking your emails that are important, and marking emails that are unimportant that slip into your priority inbox. The idea is to give the priority inbox enough information about your email behavior so that it can learn what you care about.
You might have to break the twice daily email rule, like I did, but that’s ok. We just want to make sure everything is being redirected the way we want it and that nothing slips through the cracks. Once you are confident that your priority inbox is educated, then its back to checking email twice per day, or less. I took a two-day break from the twice daily email check. And, as I expected, I got sucked back into to a few things that weren’t important. But now I’m back.
Say goodbye to the flaming inbox!