I finally hit on a solution to the trickle of annoyance caused by
institutional emails. I'm sure I have it easy compared to a lot of
places, but I still get dozens of emails a day about irrelevant things
to do with my institution. Since I subscribe to the GTD/inbox zero
principle of email management - and have
a problem with checking my email too often - this bugs me.
For a long time I tried to fight the tide with subject: and From:
filters, but it only helped a little.
So I tried a different approach, which I now realize is a devastating
weapon in the fight against institutional spam. I simply filter every
email that doesn't have my address in the To: or CC: line into a folder
called "nottome". I have a couple of additional folders and rules for
specific mailing lists, but that's the heart of this strategy. I also
mark the message as read, so it doesn't come up as a new message icon in
Thunderbird (my preferred email client). The result is blessed quiet.
And I am missing nothing important - once a day or so, when I'm
slacking off, I will peek in that folder and find the occasional important message,
but mostly marvel at all the nonsense I'm not interrupted by. So far absolutely
none of it has required an instantaneous response.
