Using Postbox

I’ve decided to give Postbox a try as my default e-mail client. I love Mail.app’s simplicity, but it has some quirks and I feel I could do better.

Here’s what I like so far:

  • A sleek interface for tagging (called topics)
  • Quick browsing of attachments in a folder or from a contact
  • Archive message immediately with ‘a’
  • Gmail-style conversation view
  • Pretty good and quick search
  • Plug-in potential, although there’s not much available yet.

Here’s what I dislike so far:

  • No global folders, i.e. one inbox, trash, sent and drafts for all accounts
  • Topics don’t seem to be IMAP-portable, so you have to apply tags both at home and at work
  • Message rules can not filter on content, only on message headers
  • The message composer is bulky
  • Integration with Mac OS X is not as good as Mail.app
  • It’s Mozilla-based, not native.

I’m undecided on:

  • Tabbed interface. I’m not used to it, I don’t need it and I don’t use it. But it might grow on me.
  • Editing messages: not sure why I’d want to do that.
  • Facebook and Twitter integration

Postbox does not come for free, while Mail.app and Thunderbird do. So it should really impress be before I switch. I remain unconvinced but hopeful for now.

Getting Things Done with Rituals

In order to achieve real productivity you need to get into the zone. Context switches take you out of the zone and should therefore be managed carefully. Get rid of multitasking.

I’ve found the mental overhead of context switches can be reduced with a clear start and end for a tiny break from work. A ritual provides such clear boundaries. I use several rituals throughout my day: reviewing my to do’s, drinking a cup of coffee while skimming through the news, getting a cup of water, and so forth. Even the daily commute between home and work helps ‘switching off’ at the end of the day.

I’ve grown used to them over time. I think I now get why people are so resistant to change…

GTD with OWA

Relying on Microsoft Outlook Web Access without Internet Explorer can be tiresome — being served a static web application that would have annoyed even in 1996 — but it is kind of relaxing too: the effort of constantly logging in and taming the horrible interface to get to your mail is a real motivator to get some actual work done.

E-mail can be hard to find, no?

For my formal request for a bachelor’s in History I needed to hand in my thesis via e-mail. I asked to make sure if I needed to include anything special with that, such as a subject line prefix, so they would be able to find it later on. The friendly lady on the phone told me that was unnecessary.

Two days later when I came into their office to hand over all other paperwork I had to wait fifteen minutes before they had found my thesis from their grand central inbox. “We get a lot of e-mail every day, you know. It’s can be hard to keep track of it all.” No shit.