Every developer should have a To
, CC
, and Other
folder in Outlook.
You should have 3 main rules in order from most to least important:
- Anything sent to me as a
To
goes to theTo
folder - Anything sent to me as a
CC
goes to theCC
folder - Anything else gets sent to the
Other
folder.
You should never look at your original Inbox
folder from this point on.
The To
folder is where all of your import emails will be.
The CC
folder will be where informational things end up, but it should not contain emails that require your immediate attention. Check them once a day or every other day.
If your manager expects you to take immediate action on the item, tell him/her that it needs to be sent as a To
. Anything in CC
is just an FYI.
When you register to specific email lists, just add the rules above Other
. For example, you might have a list that looks like this:
To me -> To
CC me -> CC
CookingDevs -> hobbies
SomeProductDevs -> someproduct
Sent to me -> Other
The Other
folder ends up being a partial dumping ground and a catch-all guard against BCC which breaks your other email filters and against groups you may not even want to be in but you were added to anyways. I.e., if you’re subscribed to SomeProduct
and someone BCCs that group, it’ll end up in Other
here because it broke your rule above. Or some product team adds you to some random interest group you never wanted to be subscribed to.
Every few days I’ll prune my Other
folder and make more rules on top of it, filtering out the things I’m interested in to their respective folders, junking them, or putting them in To
if I really care.
That’s it. Enjoy your email productivity boost.