Why Filters are my new best friend

I get lots of email and like many people first receive lots of that email on my phone. As a result I realised last year that I was hardly ever without email, it was incessant, pinging its way into my inbox and also my life almost constantly. It was generating some stress, so in November I decided I’d had enough.

But I didn’t want to cut out all the messages I was receiving as I did read and get value from the majority, my previous un-subscribe plan had worked pretty well. No, what I needed to do now was to control the mail so that I read it when I wanted to, not when it arrived jumping up and down to try and attract my attention.And then I discovered Filters. Using the Gmail filters nearly all my mail now goes to a filter called “Later”, unless you are someone I’m prepared to take a message from at any time. That way the only messages that now come to my inbox on my phone and let’s face it the one’s on the phone are the really intrusive ones, are ones that are being sent to be dealt with later. They are messages from people I want to hear from.

It’s worked a treat: maybe 4 message now arrive throughout a complete day. Everything else gets dealt with when I want to deal with it. Stress levels are now far more manaegable. Filters are my new friend.