As any of my friends probably know, I have gotten horrible at responding to email. I used to love getting email, but in the past few years, it has become an extreme headache because every time I would go to my inbox, there would be a blue-million spam messages. Out of every 100 emails I would receive, maybe two would actually be something I want to read. On top of that, I’ve had at least 4 email accounts at all times (not counting the ones from work). The whole thing was a mess.

I am pleased to announce that I finally found a solution that has put the functionality back into email.  I should have figured out what to do a long time ago, but it never occured to me that all my web email accounts now allow you to forward any messages sent to that address to another account.  (I haven’t checked out the options in most of these accounts in a long, long time.)  Once I figured out how easy it was to have everything forwarded, I decided to use my gmail account to aggregate all my various accounts because I love the spam filter and the Label interface.  I realize the world is quite divided over whether or not Labels are better than traditional folders, but I have found that the ability to assign multiple Labels to one message has really helped me organize things.  I then setup a  filter that applies a  Label to mail as it arrives based on the email address that the mail was originally addressed to.

The results have been fantastic.  I can easily see which account all the mail has come from and I’ve only received one piece of spam (which was easily thwarted with a click of the "Report Spam" button. I checked my email at least 4 times yesterday without fear or dread of spending minutes just tidying up all my accounts.  I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so receptive to my email. As a result, I may actually get back to my friends and family in a timely manner. Viva la email!