javascript:(function(){var d=new Date(Date.parse(new Date())-86400000);var t="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/"+"before%"+"3A"+d.getFullYear()+"%"+"2F"+(d.getMonth()+1)+"%"+"2F"+d.getDate()+"+in%"+"3Ainbox";window.location.href=t;})()
I would love to use a search like before:2012/08/29 OR circle:"vip" [1] unfortunately doesn't seem to work. circle:"vip" alone works great but fails with "OR".
[1] GMail Search parmaters http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe...
Unless you're counting on the incoming links' context to inform people what it's about (if you do, fair enough), I'd suggest a bit more info to the potential users.
And if it really is urgent, they can call me. Unless you're the kind of person who both sends an email and then immediately calls me about it. If you're that kind of person you quickly will be informed of how much I dislike that. If you persist, I'll take advantage of my freedom as a contractor to choose my own projects, and you'll soon not be a person that has any reason to interact with me.
Anything else risks wasting a bunch of people's time going back and forth which if it's genuinely urgent (it usually isn't) everyone should want to avoid.
The problem with the call-me-with-only-urgent-stuff approach is the Boy Who Cried Wolf problem: if people are constantly calling you (because they know they're not going to get a reply until later in the day, and they need it <whine>noowwwwwwwww</whine>, you'll put your phone on DND/silent. But now you can't respond to actual emergencies.
Maybe we should go back to pagers...
In the second case, they aren't able to distinguish what they consider to be emergencies from what are actual emergencies; this, too, is out of your control.
I honestly don't know how to deal with these. Thoughts?
This is not a feasible solution for everyone.
When I open my email client, it shows all "old" mail to me, and allows me to write new emails. It only fetches new emails when I explicitly tell it to do that.
I'm using Mutt, but I think this should work with any other email client such as Thunderbird. All you have to do is disabling the auto-fetching of new emails. And if you still feel the urge to hit the "Get Mail" button, then just configure it away from the toolbar.
tl;dr: It's all there - you just need a tiny configuration change in your email client.
If you're a commandline junkie, Sup and Notmuch both come pretty close to a gmail-style "search everything / tags everywhere" philosophy.
why not do it then? it's pretty simple to do?
I think the real reason is that you like the idea of doing that, but not the reality.
Cultural atavism might sound like a good idea, but the reality is the positive benefits of email and smartphones way outweighs the negatives.
On a vacation a few months ago I turned off automatic email fetching on my phone to try and eke out a few more hours of battery, and just kind of left it there to see what would happen.
On an average day I hit the "get my email" button twice. Once when I wake up in the morning to see if there's anything pressing, and once on my way home from work as I'm walking towards the train.
I have absolutely not missed the disruption that having a constantly-up-to-date email client in your pocket creates.
I have also yet to miss a single email due to this - people have better sense than that. If they need a quick response they know to call me or to text.
From this I've started pruning the apps and services that can interrupt me pretty hard. At this point I'm down to my calendar, my SMS client, FB direct messages, and the NYTimes (they seem to be pretty responsible, but they are on a short leash). It's worked out. I'm very much enjoying this pull lifestyle, instead of push.
In fact, you've even come across the magic number for email checking frequency. Checking it 4 times a day provides the best trade-off between reply speed and productivity gain, as seen in research by Gupta et. al.[1]
[1] Gupta, A., Sharda, R., & Greve, R. a. (2010). You’ve got email! Does it really matter to process emails now or later? Information Systems Frontiers
Then, when you want to check your new email, search for that tag, and un-archive the messages you actually want in your inbox.
It would be even better on smartphones; constantly having the new mail icon pop up on is so distracting that I have turned off automatic email checking on my phone, and just check manually every couple hours when not near a computer. This was after being surprised not to be able to find an option to control gmail's polling interval.
Your "smartphone" doesn't sound very smart.
[Edit] I use sieve filters on the server side to route email into various folders on delivery.
[Edit2] I just double checked, and the "per folder settings" are not quite as granular as I thought. You can only set up one poll interval and add that to a selection of folders, and then set other folders to push or nothing. You can't have multiple poll intervals. Eg, Could set two folders to push, three folders to poll hourly, and the rest to manual only polls.
I absolutely do not want the ability to read new email during that time. In fact, I would really like to set up GMail so email only arrives on a fixed schedule, say 2-4 times a day.