Managing E-mail with Thunderbird

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A lot of talk, lately - especially amongst bloggers - on how to effectively manage e-mail.  Since everyone has a different opinion, I thought I’d throw out my two cents.
 
Personally, I use Mozilla’s Thunderbird for all of my e-mail, rss feeds, and newsgroups.  It’s pretty much a one-stop communications resource.  The only thing it doesn’t do is instant messaging, although I’m sure, eventually, someone will write a plug-in to do just that.  Why do I use Thunderbird?  Simple, I get between 100 and 300 messages a day, including RSS feeds, NOT including newsgroups.  Thunderbird lets me have a seperate set of folders (including inbox) for each of my e-mail accounts.  Thunderbird will even access gmail (through gmail’s pop3 interface).

 
 
Managing communications with Thunderbird is a relatively easy thing to do.  For starters, Thunderbird comes with great junk mail filtering.  Essentially, it’s a beysian spam filtering system that is trained by you, the user.  When you first start out, you will get spam in your inbox.  The trick is to select the individual messages and click the “Junk” button.  The message will be moved to your junk mail folder, and the system will train itsself.  Over time, you’ll get less and less junk.  If a non-junk message gets marked as spam, then you simply click “Not Junk,” and Thunderbird copies it to your inbox (or processes it according to filtering rules), and trains itsself.
 
Okay, so you’re got your junk mail issues taken care of, now what?  Now, you set up filters for e-mail that you normally get.  Currently, I have eight accounts set up in Thunderbird.  I’ll explain each one, and the filters that I set up.  First, an intro to Thunderbird’s filters.  Thunderbird has a very powerful filtering system.  It triggers when mail is first downloaded from the pop3 server, or accessed from the IMAP server.  You set the filters up for each individual account.  Your filters can trigger based on sender, subject, to, cc, date, priority, status, age, even words in the body of the message.  You can control precisely what steps to take with each message.  Anything Thunderbird can do, can be done automatically with filters.
 
Okay, my e-mail accounts:
First, my primary Roadrunner account.  This is the e-mail account I use for normal communications, mailing lists, and my LiveJournal account.  It’s a POP3 account.
I’ve got the following folders and subfolders set up:
  • eBay - any communications coming from, or related to eBay is tossed in here by default
  • Important Info - normally, this is stuff for me to remember, and I toss things here, manually.
  • Friends - Every person I consider a friend, and/or communicate with regularly, has a seperate subfolder.  E-mail from any of their accounts gets tossed into the appropriate folder.
  • Lists - Every mailing list I read, from which I recieve individual e-mail, gets tossed into a seperate subfolder, named for the list.  Lists from which I receive a single daily digest, goes into a “Digests” folder.
  • LJ Comments - Any comments on my LiveJournal entries get tossed here.
  • MetBlogging - Any e-mails from the metblog authors list, or the Houston metblog list, go here.
  • Sent to Self - Sometimes, I’ll send myself things.  I have a single rule that triggers based on any of my e-mail addresses, including my mobile phone’s e-mail.  These get tossed here.

I have the above filtering rules set up.  Once things get downloaded and tossed, I go through my inbox in a triage mode.  I junk anything that was missed by spam filters, I delete anything that won’t need my attention, I move important data to the important info folder, and I review everything else.  If I can reply quickly, I do so.  If it needs more attention, I  toss it into one of the following folders:

  • !!Respond - Things I need to reply to, rather soon.
  • !!Whenever - Things I need to reply to, but don’t neccesitate an immediate response.

Then, if I have time, I go through and review the other folders.  When I have time, I reply to friends, comments, and lists.

Second, my domain account (the @fyreplace.com one).  This is the account I use for blogging-based communications, and forums.  This e-mail is boxtrapped, so people e-mailing me are required to go through an anti-spam verification step (when you get the verify message, just click reply -> send, that’s it), so spam gets stopped, cold.

In this account, I have the following folders, aside from inbox:

  • Comments - includes comments from the blog, and comment notifications from other blogs
  • Forums - Forum response notification e-mails
  • Newsletters - that I’ve signed up for
  • E-mail Updates - from various blogs/bloggers

Everything else gets tossed into the inbox.  If a spam message slips through, I make a note to ignorelist the sender.  I quickly triage e-mail by glancing at the subject. 90% of what I get in the inbox can be deleted immediately because the subject tells me everything of importance.  Everything else stays in the inbox and is prioritized using Thunderbird’s color coding system.  I go through, when I have time, and take care of things, waiting.  I have less e-mail in here (not counting comments/forums/newsletters) than I do in the main e-mail, above.

Third, my GTD account.  This is discussed in my post on using Thunderbird for GTD.  No special filters here, unless I have a very lengthy project.

Fourth, my webmaster account for my domain.  This account gets very little e-mail.  Only major error messages, and cron e-mails are sent here.  It gets glanced at, briefly, and usually ignored.

Fifth, my e-mail account for UnitedGhostHuntersNetwork.com, a website I help with.  Very little mail, nothing special, here, although most things from other e-mails with “Ghost” or “Paranormal” in the subject line (that isn’t from a mailing list) gets tossed into this account, as it’s usually related.

Sixth, my primary gmail account.  I use this account for signing up for various things that I feel are going to be “spammy.”  I also use it when I need my “real name” as my e-mail address (before the @).  Everything stays in the inbox, except for a few items that trigger based off of keywords like “Job,” “employment,” “hiring,” “resume,” etc…  Those get tossed into a special folder and prioritized.

Finally, my “blogs” or RSS feeds account.  This account contains several subfolders by topic.  Anytime I add a new blog, it goes in !!TRIALS, and stays there for a week or so.  If I find I’m enjoying it and want to keep reading, it goes under the appropriate topic folder.  Each RSS feed is in its own subfolder, and it reads in the mail interface.  Thunderbird allows me to either display the “message summary,” or load the full webpage (as defined in the feed) for that entry.  I normally use this option, as it allows me to view comments, inline.  I don’t use filters here, as feeds are automatically parsed to their respective subfolders.  I go through these when I have a chance, usually moving straight down the list.

There are two more “sections” left, but they don’t merit much discussion.  The “Local Folders” section that is always present in Thunderbird.  Thunderbird allows you to have a seperate folder system (if you so choose) for each e-mail account, normally identified by the e-mail address.  If you just want things to dump to a generic inbox, use the Local Folders.

The final section is the NNTP section, or UseNet Newsgroups.  Each newsgroup is its own subfolder, and is read just like e-mail.  It’s pretty much one of those things that I get to, if I have time.  Normally, I look at it about once a week, maybe.

As you can see, managing e-mail in Thunderbird is all about creating folders, and using filters to move things into the proper area.  If you have a lot of messages you normally delete (such as “comment spam” notifications), then create a filter to auto-delete them.  Move things into various folders (such as normal communication), and leave only the non-usual within the inbox.  So long as the inbox and !!REPLY folders are taken care of, promptly, the rest can normally be left until you have extra time.  Learning to triage your e-mail, is a very, very important things.

This post was inspired by Darren Rowse’s post on managing his e-mail.

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4 Responses to “Managing E-mail with Thunderbird”

  1. Binary Blonde says:

    Wow, great post! Very concise and great information for someone considering switching.

    I also use Thunderbird. I adore it. It’s free, it’s fast and has everything I want in an email program. In fact, just tonight, I just learned how to add an html signature!

    My next item to-do is to set it up to collect my RSS feeds. ‘Course, using your post I’ll be able to set it up in no time.

    December 8th, 2005 at 3:22 am
  2. Fyre says:

    One thing to remember, Binary, (and I need to edit the post to reflect this, tomorrow), is that you need to add your feeds to main “blogs” folder, NOT to the subfolders. When you do this, thunderbird automatically creates a subfolder based on the name of the feed. At that point, you can organize.

    If you select a pre-existing subfolder when you create a new feed, all articles are placed in that subfolder, without a new one being created. Sure, you could create a new subfolder, then create a feed, but why not let T-Bird do it for you? heh.

    December 8th, 2005 at 4:07 am
  3. Максим Кузьмичев says:

    Вообще, откровенно говоря, комментарии тут гораздо любопытней самих постов. (Не в обиду автору, конечно :))

    May 30th, 2009 at 10:06 am
  4. Ростислав says:

    Большое спасибо за возможность оставлять комментарии на этой странице!

    June 21st, 2009 at 2:45 am

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