I recently shifted my email processing to storing all my already processed email is an archive folder (rather than lots of special purpose folders).
Now that I have reduced my incoming spam by 95%, I am trying a new inbox experiment.
- View email recent first
- BCC all outgoing mail into my inbox
- leave all email in my inbox
- note a set of processed email by sending myself a STOP POINT message
If this works, I will no longer be dependent on IMAP. I’ll be able to do useful searching and sorting with whatever mail client I want. And I will spend even less time “managing my email”.
Also, I set my email polling interval to check for new email every hour rather than every minute. That leads to a much higher level of sanity. I may start switching all my subscription email to a different folder and then increase the polling frequency. We’ll see.