I’ve written before about email and how in the grand scheme of things it’s not so bad. But a few months ago I noticed it was getting on top of me a bit and stopping me from being quite so proactive so I did what every productivity geek does and shopped around for something to solve the problem. I decided to give Sanebox a go again — I tried it once a few years back but for some reason never stuck with it.

This time it’s definitely helped. I can’t quite explain why but there’s something about the way it works that lessens the amount of time I worry about email. You give it api access to your mailboxes and then let it work its magic. Messages it deems non-urgent get put into a folder called @Sanelater rather than appearing in your inbox leaving you with just the important stuff. It then sends you a daily email with the unimportant stuff that you can have a quick look through — training anything it’s got wrong and reading anything that’s just ‘fyi’.

They also have an excellent list of 100 email hacks. To be honest I don’t mind paying $99 a year for the service (for 2 email accounts) — if you sign up here you’ll get $5 off (yay!). I’m sure it’s not for everyone but well worth a try if you’re drowning.