Gmail gets into the organizing business

I few days ago I wrote a post about an email filtering system being developed to help prioritize email. I was skeptical, and blogged that I would rather cut down on the incoming email rather than have a program try and do it for me. Today I see that GMAIL added a new feature called Priority Inbox that is currently in Beta. Well, I like trying new things, so figured I would give it a try. The first thing it did was to show me a screen of some of my email and which ones it thought was important and which ones had less of a priority. It correctly selected emails from friends and family to the top and subscriptions and solicitations at the bottom. So my skepticism got knocked a little there. Then it organized my email. Important and unread messages went to the top of the screen. The rest went to the bottom, with outlines of little yellow markers next to the ones that GMail thinks are important, but have lower priority since I already read them. And then it gives a space in the middle to list emails that I manually star.

Hmmmm. That's not bad actually. It means I read the important unread stuff first. And since I use my Inbox as a task list, only deleting or archiving when I have completed the task, I could star those items to easily group them together. Then the bottom part gets read and filed when I have a few minutes. OK GMAIL, that isn't so bad and it's nice that I can turn it off any time.

I still think that people who don't manage their email well now, will fall into the trap of subscribing to everything they see and letting it all fall to the bottom of the page. Then never read any of them setting up the perfect opportunity to miss important emails that are incorrectly identified by the program.

For now, I'm going to continue to be stingy with my email address and unsubscribe to those interesting newsletters and special offers that I never take advantage. But I think I am also going to keep Priority Inbox on to help me triage the busy days a little faster.