Anybody who uses Google Mail knows what threads are – “chains” of emails related by topic and usually ordered by date. They differ from the ordinary “inbox view” where emails appear ordered by date of arrival, “From” address or other criteria.
Why are threads useful? Threads (or as Microsoft calls them, “conversations”) provide a great way of quickly digesting a number of emails on the same topic, undistracted by emails on other topics, and thus reducing the time it takes to catch up on email.
Look at the following sample thread in Mac Mail. Here’s what it looks like when compressed:
The last email in a thread becomes its "label."
And this is the same thread expanded:
click the "flippy triangle" to see all the emails in a thread
Starting at the bottom of the thread and working up to the top, you can easily:
- follow a thread from the first email to the last
- skim redundancies in the conversation
- focus on new insights
- note that threads can contain changing subject lines
- reduce the total time it takes to catch up on this conversation
How you can use this tip
Many modern email clients (Outlook, Mac Mail, etc.) let you organize your email by thread (the option commonly resides in the View menu). Using threads might help you process your email more quickly.
Turn on threading in your email client and try it for a week or so. Does it reduce the amount of time you take to catch up on email?