Thursday, March 28, 2013

Mailbox App for iOS - Can you adjust to it?

Mailbox App for iOS - Can you adjust to it?

I downloaded this application about two weeks and I had a countdown from roughly 600,000. I finally got it today. I set it up with my GMail and I got a chance to use it throughout the day.

I had a lot of emails in my Inbox. To make this application do the GTD (Getting Things Done) on your emails, I first had to archive all my emails or move them to some "AlreadyReadEmails" label.

So I started with empty Inbox and messages were flowing in.

As you can see in the screenshot, the Mailbox app allows you to do the following with each email by just swiping:

** Archive it
** Delete it
** Snooze it
** Move it into a nested label that belongs to "Mailbox" parent label



In the past, I trained myself to do the following when I get emails:
  1. Move email(s) into an "action" label  OR
  2. Star it   OR
  3. Leave in Inbox and then at the end of day try to clean my Inbox
When it comes to the Mailbox app, I find myself spending too much time deciding where to put the message because the rule of thumb is that you cannot leave it in the Inbox. Maybe I am not fully trained on the GTD approach. I like only acting on option 1 or 2 from above and at the end of the day, I would be cleaning the the Inbox.

Another frustrating thing is that I cannot move emails into one my previously created labels. I only have options to move to nested labels/Lists within Mailbox parent label as per the screenshot.

Conclusion:

If you are used to iOS Mail app and Google's GMail app, you should/might give this application a try, but don't have high expectations. If you already have a good system for managing emails and it is not fully a GTD system, then you will struggle. Be patient.

>>> Update after 3 days
Three days into it and I am liking this app more and more. Emails sometimes come a few minutes late, but I am sure that they will improve their servers. I am assuming that Mailbox keeps all the email headers and scheduling information on their servers and also on the client/phone; so if the phone dies, you can still sync it and get your snoozing information back.


Keywords: #mailbox #mailboxapp #GTD #emailapp #iOS #managingemails
<THE END>






1 comment:

  1. I am still using it. I will give it a week to see if I can adjust to it and it is not all about adjusting; it needs to simplify my life. Isn't that the whole point?

    ReplyDelete