miniMail 2.0 retains all the goodness of the original–the ability to minimize Mail.app’s interface like you can in iTunes–but adds more features and flexibility.

The minimised interface is elegant and efficient, as you would expect from the developer of MailTags:

It is also fully integrated with Mail Act-on, allowing you to use the same keystrokes to file messages away quickly.

The plugin’s Preference pane offers options to control which mailboxes it monitors, text size inside the minimized interface itself and how it should expand again when double-clicked (to the mail mail.app window or a single message window):

The Preference pane also controls miniMail 2.0’s new feature–multiple mini viewers.

You can now open a Message Viewer for a number of individual mailboxes and minimize them to keep track of new messages in particular accounts or even RSS feeds.

Here I am monitoring my work email in one miniMail window, my Hawk Wings email in another (one canny doctoral student sends his emails to both!) and the network status RSS feed of my ISP:

Very handy for keeping focus on important things whilst filtering out the rest.

miniMail is shareware (USD 12.95) and is available from Indev’s web site . Registered users of MailTags and Mail Act-on qualify for a USD 4 discount.

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• Getting Things Done with Mail and iCal
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(If you are mystified about endless references to “Getting Things Done” (or GTD), Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders is still the best way to lift the fog. See his recent “Getting Things Done: Recap for ‘07″ post for a list of red-hot how-tos and tutorials on boiling GTD down to something workable for you, or jump right into his “Getting started with GTD.” )

Johannes’ way of using Mail.app to get things done is not like my own Mail.app GTD system which makes it all the more interesting and useful to read. There is always something to learn from people who do things differently.

I make an effort to keep everything in Mail, which then acts as my “Bucket”, processing hub and also my to-do list. Less swapping from app to app helps me to focus on getting the tasks done.

Johannes likes to dump stuff out to iCal. He uses calendars to separate out his projects and contexts. A clever combination of Mail Act-on, Quicksilver and applescript helps him to create an all-encompassing system.

I use MailTags to set iCal to-dos, but only so iCal’s alarm will shoot a reminder back into my inbox about something that needs to get done. MailTags’ keywords for @Action, @Waiting and @Defer and its project tags give me enough power and control to manage a confusion of Real Life, blogging, freelancing and family tasks efficiently.

While Mail remains for me what Johannes calls a “Cockpit”, he uses DoBeDo as his cockpit, managing his to-dos through the widget’s interface.

His GTD toolbox list at the end of the post shows that his system is up and running for less than USD 70 (and most of that is for the software to sync his Palm T|X). It pays for itself in a week at the outside.

Related posts

• Got some things done in Apple Mail, Part II
• Getting Things Done in Apple Mail
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MailRecent provides a quick filing solution for Mail.app.

It adds three new menus — “Copy to Recent”, “Move to Recent”, and “Go to Recent” — to Apple Mail. Each of these contains dynamically-updated lists of recently used mailboxes:

The number of mailboxes listed in the menus is controlled by the “Number of Recent Items” setting for Documents in the Appearance panel of the OS X System Preferences.

By default MailRecent sorts the mailboxes alphabetically, but Greg provides instructions for some Terminal commands to sort them by time or frequency of use.

One small thing. The plugin only lists the name of the mailbox. So, for example, if you have three accounts each with an “Archive” mailbox, you will not be able to tell from the list which one is which.

UPDATE: Greg emails to say that this kind of ambiguity shouldn’t arise. The Usage section on the plugin’s page says that, “If you transfer to one or more mailboxes that happen to have the same name, the menu item titles will be extended with a minimal distinguishing path to the mailbox. This is true whether the “duplicate” mailboxes (same names) are in the same or different mail accounts.” The extension doesn’t appear for me, but it might be there for you. It works for Greg.

Personally, I use Mail Act-on for my filing, but this provides another neat solution to getting mail out of your inbox and where it belongs quickly.

MailRecent is freeware and available from Greg’s web site .

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He is an academic, and writes chiefly with professors and their students in mind. Still, the tips, ideas and workflows that he demonstrates will be useful to everyone.

He covers the absolute basics in the first tutorial. A second one covers things like weening yourself off webmail and why IMAP is better.

How to get students to use email properly makes up the third and the fourth deals with important things like sorting email and keeping the inbox clean.

The last one covers keyboard shortcuts and contains a nice screencast on using Mail Act-on to sort emails quickly:

Hardcore Mail.app productivity nuts will not find much here that they didn’t know before. But looking over how someone else deals with their email always prompts me to think again about how I do it and often leads me to develop a better way.

And not everyone is hardcore. I get regular emails from remote acquaintences, friends of my wife’s hairdresser, people who stumble across Hawk Wings on the net and others who want to know all about how to use Mail better. Now I have somewhere to send them. That’s a big productivity boost for me, and maybe for you too.

In any case, academics who write about using Mail.app are pretty thin on the ground. That sort of thing ought to be encouraged.

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She’s decided to try stemming the flow with Mail.app and MailTags and Mail Act-on , two of the very best plugins for Apple Mail.

It is interesting to see what she discovers and whether she is hopeful that it will be enough to meet the challenge of her 20,000 email inboxes. Interesting too to ponder whether better tools can beat a cultural problem.

Two things at least are better than she holds out. Emails can be tagged with rules in mail.app, so manual tagging is not the only way to bring some order into your data. And the public beta of MailTags does bring reliable syncing of IMAP tags between more than one Mac.

I think, though, that even the most partisan MailTagger would have to concede her other point. You do need to use a Mac to enjoy the plugin’s benefits.

I wonder if Scott is secretly working away on an Outlook or Thunderbird version?

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He frames it all within the Getting Things Done method of task management, but even if you are not a devotee, you will benefit from the extensive screenshots and the clear way in which the tutorial is designed.

Although he tried using the principles of Feng Shui to manage his email with some success in the past,

by using a couple of simple techniques and some cool software, you can use a less new-agey means to simplify your message stream and get back to work…. The goal is to make the act of archiving a one step process. A big part of getting control of your inbox is to be able to triage and filter information quickly. If if takes you more than a second to store a message, then you are taking too long.

Ten steps or less.

Related posts

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It is incredibly useful. It holds the number two spot in the “Top ten things every mail.app user should have” and is mentioned more than any other plugin in the “Talking Mail.app” interview series.

The new version (1.3.2) is a universal plugin, now offering Act-On goodness for the new Intel-based Macs as well.

It also contains a small bugfix. Rules that are disabled in Preferences will no longer show up in the Act-On Menu.

Mail Act-On is donation-ware and is available from Scott’s web site . Scott also maintains a page of tips for getting the most out of Mail Act-On.

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I am. There’s a shiny new MacBook Pro with my name on it out there somewhere. Or there will be.

The big question for me is not whether I’ll miss the FW800 port as much as I think I will (probably not), or whether I will kick myself for not waiting for the Rev B (probably), but whether Mail.app with all my favourite things bolted-on will run natively.

So I asked the developers of all the plugins and addons on the Top Ten things every Mail.app user should have list, how ready they were for the Intel Macs. Here’s the good news:

1. MailTags. Scott Morrison says that a universal binary will be available “hopefully” in two weeks. And as Version 1.2 with a killer new feature as well!
2. Mail Act-on. Two weeks will see a universal binary of this plug-in as well.
3. MailAppetizer. This has been a universal binary since July last year. Ready to go.
4. Mail Scripts. This has also been a universal binary since the middle of last year. Andeas Amann says that “the only potential problem might be the “Archive Messages” script since it packages some pre-complied Perl packages as well”. But if any problems exist, they’ll soon be ironed out.
5. Mail Stamps. Version 2.1 was compiled as a universal binary for Intels and PowerPCs. And it worked fine on his developer Intel Mac, Andrew Escobar says.
6. MailUnreadStatusBar. Masaru says that it’s not clear whether this utility will need a recompile or not, “because it isn’t supposed to depend on architecture”. It should work equally well on a PPC or an Intel.
7. JunkMatcher or SpamSieve. Michael Tsai says that at the moment SpamSieve runs in Rosetta with Mail.app and the SpamSieve plug-in running natively. But a recompiled version of SpamSieve is due out in two weeks and will be available as a free upgrade.

   JunkMatcher’s developer Benjamin Han wants to address some issues with his app before recompiling for Intel Macs. Due to time pressures, “it’ll probably be a while”, he says.

8. Take Control of Apple Mail in Tiger. It is my understanding that this excellent ebook will be just as helpful on an Intel Mac as it is now.
9. QuickSilver. Quicksilver and all its plug-ins were recompiled earlier this week.
10. Spell Catcher X. Evan Gross says he will post a recompiled beta of Spell Catcher X next week (when he gets back from MacWorld) that will also contain some new features and few minor bugfixes. The final release will be polished up and available long before most people get their hands on one of the new Macs.

Now there is no excuse for restraint.

You can find a longer list of all recompiled applications that are ready to run natively on VersionTracker’s MacIntel Resource Center.

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It’s a tribute to AppleScript (and to Aaron) that it works as well in Mail 2.0 now as it did then.

The script requires some editing, but instructions are provided. You will also find tips on how to create a hot key for the script, or you could use FastScripts to set the shortcut.

This script was written before Mail Act-on existed. Along with Jonathan Nathan’s MailMover, it provides a slightly more laborious and involved alternative.

The script is available from Aaron’s blog.

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Part Two is about the book and about how I’ve since modified my Mail Act-on and MailTags set-up to help me get some things done better than on my first attempt. (All of which you will find after the jump… )

First, actually reading the “Getting Things Done” book was a good idea.

These kinds of management/personal/life transformation/success schemes often have two or three good ideas that you can rip out of them without getting too involved. But in this case I was glad I took the trouble.

You can find the skeleton of the GTD system on the web at 43Folders (the GTD 101 post and the wiki) and elsewhere, but the book puts flesh on the bones. For example, I found the “Incompletion Trigger” lists very useful and the fourfold, threefold and sixfold models full of good ideas.

There is a danger with reading the book though. When you stumble across statements like

You can ignore the physical world and its realities and trust in the universe. I did that and it was a powerful experience

it is tempting to stop and think, “What does that actually mean?” What is the universe apart from the physical world and its realities? What are the realities of the physicalworld in the first place?

Or this kind of thing pops up:

Frankly, as soon as you have two things to do stored in your RAM, you’ve generated personal failure, because you can’t do both of them at the same time

and straight-away you are asking yourself, what are the assumptions about human beings that underpin this system — what kind of person finds that really a personal failure? Is the metaphor of the mind as a personal computer actually a compelling one?

That’s a trap. The point of Getting Things Done is getting things done; that is the results it generates, not the system itself. Press on and make it work for you. Go somewhere else for metaphysics and piercing analysis of the postmodern condition.

With this firm “results not dogma” mindset, I returned to my original attempt to make Apple Mail help me to get things done. You will remember the basic workflow pattern that supports the GTD system:

(I nicked this GTD Workflow diagram from Danny Ayers’ blog, hoping he won’t mind)

Everything is either binned, deferred, filed, done on the spot, delegated or is marked for next action on its first logical task.

Apart from doing things that take less than two minutes and then archiving the message, every email that comes through my smart mailbox system suffers one of five fates.

Either it is deleted on the spot using the old-fashioned delete key, or I use Mail Act-on to apply one of four rules to it — Action, Waiting for, Sometime (Tickle File), File (i.e. archive). I killed one of my initial rules – untagged – which just encouraged me not to make decisions about what to do with a particular message. (See the earlier blog entry for details on what I did with Mail Act-on and MailTags to set up a GTD-friendly system in Apple Mail.)

The Action rule applies a MailTags keyword (Action) and changes the email’s colour in the Viewer window to red.

The Waiting For rule applies a MailTags keyword (Waiting) and changes the colour of the message to yellow.

Sometime applies a MailTags keyword (Sometime) and changes the colour of the email to grey.

File simply moves the message to the Archive folder on my IMAP server. With Mail.app’s use of Spotlight I find that my reference material and archive can live together in the same IMAP folder without fiddling around or a loss of productivity.

After the triage, everything I still need to do appears in one of the smart mailboxes. Nothing else does.

A recurring task in kGTD allows iCal to send me an email once a week, reminding me to sort through the Tickle File/Someday folder, and to do various other Review-like tasks. (Update: Well, it did until I discovered Zak Geant’s GTDMail AppleScript. Now my Tickler file is automated.)

It’s not canonical GTD. But it is working well for me, and that’s the main thing. I still get context confusion but not as badly and that’s a small price to pay for the benefits.

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