The e-mail DMZ and other filters...

At the beginning of this year, Merlin posted a tip to 43Folders that outlined an e-mail DMZ. I've been using it with great success since the day it was posted, and here's how it's helped me focus my e-mail usage two months later.

At the time, my inbox was filled with well over 100 "important" items I had flagged, and people I was never going to get back to in a timely manner. (A running gag is if you e-mail me and send me a postcard, you're more likely to get a response to the postcard first).

So when I read this tip, I didn't even think twice about creating a folder called 00_DMZ in Apple Mail (since it's named 00_ it will be filed first, or at least as close to first as possible).

So now my folder list looks like...

* Inbox - Anything that passes through my gauntlet of filters will end up here.

* 00_DMZ - I manually drag and drop items in here from my Inbox, Lists folders, or my 00_SUPERUNKNOWN folder.

* 00_SUPERUNKNOWN - This folder is propagated automatically by rules set up in Apple Mail. If a piece of mail is not caught by Apple Mail's junk filters, but that piece of mail also doesn't meet specific rules (like the sender has sent mail to me before, and that it is addressed directly to me) then it will end up here for further manual inspection.

Assuming it's legit, I will apply a white-list to the sender, or the subject, and I will drag it to my 00_DMZ folder. This catches mostly junk that is well crafted, but it will sometimes catch stuff that is legit.

It's very handy for keeping your Inbox clean, while still letting you feel confident that you're not filtering mail that may be important.

* The Lists and System Messages folders are propagated automatically by rules set up in Apple Mail to catch mailing lists I am on, and automatic messages generated by servers on the internet (Mine, Amazon, Google, etc).

* The Work folders and My Stuff are folders I drag mail into manually. Work-Ineocom is for my small business stuff that relates to running the company. Work-Customers is for e-mails that my customers generate. within that folder are sub-folders with each customer name.

This is one area that could be cleaned up a lot. I'm still figuring it out. In the mean time it works, it's just not optimal.

My Stuff is just for me. It's not particularly important, but it's for e-mails that I'd like to keep for later reference.

* Drafts, Sent, Trash and Junk are all system folders.

I could improve this by making better use of Apple Mail's Smart Folders, or even compressing my Work folders into one, and I could cut down on the content of my 00_SUPERUNKNOWN folder by implementing SpamAssasin server side.

Now: how do I keep from dragging stuff into my 00_DMZ folder just to forget about it? That's something I'll try and detail in another posting.

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