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Ask HN: Tips for Reducing the Number of Inboxes

by jhylands on 5/23/22, 10:12 AM with 85 comments

• by albertzeyer on 5/23/22, 10:55 AM

  The EU is planning to require big online messaging services to be interoperable.

  https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/24/22995431/european-union-d...

  This would solve it. Then you could simply use a single app.

  This is a political thing. So, vote for it, talk to the politicians.

• by skrebbel on 5/23/22, 1:24 PM

  People like to diss email as a "todo list that other people can add items to", but really, this holds for just about all communication channels.

  So for me, what worked is to only use one channel (in my case, my work gmail) as a valid TODO-inbox. Everything else doesn't count.

  This means that if someone WhatsApps me something that requires a TODO, I ask them to email me a reminder. In my particular social situation, this tends to work. If they don't want to do this, it's probably not important enough

  I keep my email itself clean by using Andreas Klinger's classic gmail-TODO-setup (https://klinger.io/posts/dont-drown-in-email-how-to-use-gmai...). That article is 9 years old now but it still works perfectly, despite Google's reputation for killing niche apps/features.

  Then, I enable email notifications in key apps (eg Slack and GitHub), most of which I archive right away, but occasionally mark as a TODO using the gmail-TODO-setup. This means I never have a secondary "unread message as TODO items" list in slack, or similar in GitHub. It's very nice.

  Finally, I use "Simple Gmail Notes" (https://bart.solutions/simple-gmail-notes/) to add little notes to myself about what a TODO-email is about. eg "review this" or "delegate to someone", etc.

• by theshrike79 on 5/23/22, 10:23 AM

  I'm just listening to a talk by Scott Hanselman about things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWPgUn8tL8s

  His solution: Schedule it. Reserve time in your calendar to check each of the sites based on urgency.

  And if you don't want to be contacted by some method, don't reply using it. The best way to get more email is to send more email.

• by thenoblesunfish on 5/23/22, 10:57 AM

  Things that have helped at least mitigate this problem include:

  - For things which don't spam you (e.g. messengers like Signal or WhatsApp), use similar settings for the various apps on your phone. If you don't want a lot of noise, set them to show you unread messages as badges and put them on the front page of your phone

  - For things which are used infrequently or do spam you, set up email alerts when possible (e.g. when someone @-mentions you on one of your thousand Slack workspaces), combined with email filters which put things in folders which you can check much like the badged apps.

  - If a message comes in on a rarely-checked channel and you don't get it for a long time, respond with an apology on a more preferred channel (e.g. a friend messages you on LinkedIn and you respond with an email or message on Signal).

  - Accept that you have to let some messages slip through, and trust that your relationships can handle some people having to try a second channel to reach you, some of the time.

• by kkfx on 5/23/22, 11:12 AM

  My personal is:

  - own your own domain name, so you can transfer it as needed

  - own your email, having as many aliases as you need

  - download ALL your mails locally (fetchmail, OfflineIMAP, mbsync, ...) perhaps on a homeserver and use them in a local maildir with a local client, like notmuch, so you have a unified inbox for anything

  - avoid proprietary messaging platforms and teach others to do the same

  that's works for me so far, surely many try to put pressure on me for WA, Slack etc but I always successfully decline. Anything is NOT ONLY centralized but also unified. In the same tool (Emacs/EXWM) I have mails, feeds, usenet etc I do not like much Gnus but in that case I can also get HN and Reddit there, with the same UIs, local antispam, local scoring etc.

  The tip is always the same: as any of us you feel the need of classic desktop model and we all miss it, but something we can still do to have some kind of substitutes :-)

• by thebiblelover7 on 5/23/22, 10:14 AM

  I personally use Matrix and bridge all my social accounts to there. It works super well, because my friends don't have to switch their app, but I see everyone in just one app. matrix.org/bridges

• by vivegi on 5/23/22, 11:00 AM

  I struggled with this a couple of years ago and then decided I will reduce the channels. Now I have email (asynchronous/long-form/personal/professional), signal (personal networks) and linkedin (professional network). That's it.

  This has been very helpful for me and I no longer have the fear of missing out.

  If it is important enough, people know how best to reach me.

• by holri on 5/23/22, 11:46 AM

  I simply refuse to use a lot of those channels. Email is 90% of my communcation, almost everyone has it. People learn that I am responsive only by email.

• by thomas101 on 5/23/22, 12:09 PM

  I faced a similar problem, a whole bunch of sites that all have their own unread items, notifications and so-forth.

  I started writing a desktop app, Wavebox (https://wavebox.io) about 6 years ago to help me deal with this. It lets you add all your apps down the side of the window, each one with its own unread badge & notifications. Might be something that's helpful?

• by flanbiscuit on 5/23/22, 2:55 PM

  I don't have a perfect solution for you but this problem has been on my mind for a couple years now and I was calling it "communication fatigue".

  > Does everyone just deal with it?

  Basically, yes. In my case I just end up not stressing about responding to things in a timely manner. Outside of my work apps (outlook,slack,teams), I am the most responsive on email and Instagram chats but that's mainly because I open and use that app on a daily basis. In Whatsapp, I mute any group chat that is too active because I don't need distracting notifications every hours or less.

  Do I miss things? yes, but I've never really missed anything super important and my friends know to shoot me a SMS text or use one of my more active mediums (instagram or gmail) to get in touch with me for important things.

  The best I can say is just prioritize and train your friends/family to know which medium you are most responsive in. Disable notifications on apps you barely interact with or mute very active individual chats that aren't important

• by infinityplus1 on 5/23/22, 10:45 AM

  Why do you have to check anything manually? Just install their apps and receive push notifications for them. You can also make the notifications silent to reduce distractions.

  Or if your phone supports notification badges on icons, just place their icons on home screen and you'll notice what app has updates by just checking the badge counts.

• by endisneigh on 5/23/22, 10:38 AM

  just stop using all of those apps - done. Pick 2-3 and cut the rest.

• by blfr on 5/23/22, 11:26 AM

  For personal needs, I settled on a single email account (Google Workspace) that pulls emails from all my other accounts (acts as an email client) plus Signal which also handles texts. As for people who use Facebook/Messenger, WhatsApp, or Telegram, I just text them.

  For professional needs, I'm also at a loss. I have Outlook, Slack, Signal/texts, Jira notifications, Confluence notifications, LinkedIn, MS Teams... and then Zoom, Google Meet, and Webex but these are at least scheduled. I never come across anyone using WhatsApp, Telegram, or Facebook/Messenger professionally but I'm sure it's coming and will be a joy.

  I have seen people happy with Beeper[1] but I'm neither willing to hand over my keys, nor self-host it.

  [1] https://www.beeper.com/

• by pSYoniK on 5/23/22, 12:47 PM

  I just moved to Signal and told everyone I was going to do that. Some have followed and some haven't. At a point I had 6 messaging apps to talk to 6 different people and it was untenable especially after moving to Graphene OS as I didnt want to run microg.

  Those who havent migrated, well, not a huge loss and sone have switched over to email. Discussions also gained a bit more depth with the move to long-form writing. It really comes down to this - do you want to have fewer apps? then make the switch. Do you want to talk to everyone on their preferred platforms - continue as is. There are some apps that help mitigate this (I believe element can through addons) but I wanted to cut down not add complexity.

• by abendy on 5/23/22, 1:03 PM

  I've actually increased the amount of inboxes (especially email). I label into category/topic (eg finance) and sometimes sub-topic (eg taxes) inboxes based on sender or subject/message content. It keeps my main inbox clean and easy to go through. Alert type emails (calendar invites, password resets etc.) stay in the main inbox.

  I keep my work and tech inboxes open throughout the day. Things like news, finance/markets, etc. I check every few days. Others I check whenever they're relevant (taxes, cooking, entertainment etc.)

  It took a lot of work to set up but it works well for me.

  For message apps I just rely on the notifications.

• by revorad on 5/23/22, 10:57 AM

  I’ve seen this service recommended by some people - https://texts.com/

  I haven’t used it myself but might be what you’re looking for.

• by simlan on 5/23/22, 11:13 AM

  I have Blackberry Hub on my phone. I found it only marginally useful at first but it does integrate with all big services (if you have the apps installed) and centralizes the viewing of it. I am not a powers or use it very much but it available maybe you can check that out. Pretty sure there are other 3rd parties that do this little trick.

• by codingdave on 5/23/22, 11:01 AM

  You know the advice that if a friend is only a friend because you are connected on Facebook, maybe you aren't really friends? That same logic holds true if your relationships are dependent on any specific app.

  Decide what you are comfortable keeping up with, and tell your tribe to use those methods to contact you.

• by jll29 on 5/23/22, 10:51 AM

  Proprietary apps are only installed for exploratory purposes and may or may not be checked quarterly.

  I'm on email. If you want to be my friend, use open standards. If you want to reach me, use email.

  No, you can't reach me on Facebook or WhatsApp. If you DM me on Twitter, I will say please email me.

• by cipher222 on 5/23/22, 12:04 PM

  I think using matrix you can link all your matrix app together and receive messages in one place

• by coffeeblack on 5/23/22, 1:41 PM

  That’s what I use a phone for. You get all the different notifications from all the different apps in one notification stream.

  Also, there is no reason why you couldn’t be one of those friends who “only use Signal”.

• by starik36 on 5/23/22, 12:29 PM

  For me, the only need was using iMessage on non Apple devices. To solve that I am using a MacOS VM with AirMessage installed on it. It lets me access iMessage from a browser.

• by croisillon on 5/23/22, 11:32 AM

  I use wupfh.com and get everything sent to the fax, much easier