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The Very Cool Rule: mark it as "read"
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Remember the Very Cool rule? In the workshop, you may have doubted about going along with it. Perhaps now is the time to reconsider.
At the core, Speedmailing is all about distraction removal and conscious focus on the task at hand. You're probably enjoying the reduced distraction from incoming email alerts. Yet, when you're working on your tasks in Outlook do you still find your inbox draws attention because the unread message counter keeps increasing? Can we fix that? Yes with a tiny hack.
This is where the Very Cool Rule comes in. To only way to rule out these distractions is by ruling out unread email all together, automatically. This sounds scary to some but please be aware that in the new system we do not care about unread emails. We only care about undecided emails in our inbox. Once read, we decide and move them, so the unread indication no longer adds value.
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Are you in? Here's how to:
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- Go to the Rules menu; Manage Rules & Alerts; New Rule
- Choose: "Apply rule on messages I receive"; Next
- Choose: Through the specified account; in Step 2 lower in the same window, click on Specified account and choose the default; Next
- Select the action "mark it as read" Click Next
- Next again and then name the Rule to something you will remember, like "mark all email as read very cool rule"
- Click Finish, Outlook will remind you that the rule only works on this machine.
Since all your mailbox-based work is taking place in your action folders, you won't be seeing any new messages arriving and can enjoy a disturbance-free mail environment. Simple, really!
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Know someone who can benefit from this tip (co-worker, friend, spouse or former colleague)? Feel free to share it with them by forwarding [Ctrl-F] this e-mail.
If you have any questions or suggestions, we'd love to hear from you.
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Happy mailing!
Wishing you a disturbance-free inbox every day,
Email Handyman
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