culling my inbox + my favorite email newsletters
I have 51 unread emails in my inbox right now. This might not seem like a lot to many of you, but to someone with a control freak personality who's used to being at inbox zero, it's an infuriating number to look at.
One reason I can't get this number down is because I treat my inbox like a to-do list. If I read an email and it has some sort of task implied in it that I need to do (respond, Zelle charge a friend, follow up in a week, etc), I mark it as unread so it sticks around in my inbox. This is something I've learned to do over the years, and it works remarkably well.
The main culprit of my inbox problem is that I simply have too much incoming mail. I subscribe to quite a few great email newsletters, which is a medium I've come to embrace since the pandemic. They're relatively unobtrusive, generally high quality, and delightfully diverse. I attribute most of the interestingness in my information diet to email newsletters. But it's time for me to thin the herd a bit, since I can't deal with twenty new emails a week, all filled with long-form articles to read and videos to watch. I want to share them here, both so you can take advantage of them and also so I can look back and see which ones I miss.
If you're looking for good email newsletters to follow (outside of these recommendations), I recommend subscribing to The Sample. It's a email newsletter aggregator that sends you recommendations based on your interests on a weekly basis (or more frequently, if you'd like). You can subscribe to newsletters you like in one click and downvote the ones you don't to train the model on your taste.
Onto my favorite email newsletters...
- kottke.org - home of fine hypertext products
- One of the oldest, most popular blogs on the web. I love how diverse it is, and Jason Kottke often serves up things that make me smile or learn something new. If I could only subscribe to one email newsletter, this would be it. My one complaint is that the emails come very inconsistently. Sometimes I get three emails a week (which is way too much, in my opinion), and other times I go weeks without seeing one. I don't mind getting less emails, but getting a bunch in a week annoys me.
- Benedict's Newsletter
- "What happened in tech that actually mattered, and what did it mean? Once a week, I send an email newsletter to 175,000 people – I pick out the changes and ideas you don’t want to miss in all the noise, and give them context and analysis. What happened in tech that actually mattered, and what did it mean? Once a week, I send an email newsletter to 175,000 people – I pick out the changes and ideas you don’t want to miss in all the noise, and give them context and analysis."
- The tech industry is not my favorite thing to read about, but because I work in it, I am somewhat obligated to keep up with the happenings. Benedict's Newsletter gives me bite-sized chunks of the trends happening in tech, and I like his analysis. Unlike kottke.org, Benedict Evans is unerringly regular with his emails (every week on Tuesday), but the drawback is that many of his articles linked are paywalled ($10/mo, $100/yr). I don't care enough about tech to pay, but it can be annoying to only get a teaser.
- Weekly Filet by David Bauer
- "Make sense of what matters, today and for the future. Every Friday, carefully curated recommendations on what to read, watch and listen to. Trusted by thousands of curious minds, since 2011."
- 3 curated links, once a week. I didn't expect to like this one as much as I do, but something about just having 3 things a week makes me infinitely more likely to open the email and actually read the contents (rather than some of these other email newsletters with billions of links in their emails that would take me eons to get through).
- 10+1 Things by Rishikesh Sreehari
- A lot like Weekly Filet, but with more recommendations. I've noticed a slight focus on science and sustainability, which I love. Delightfully indie feel.
- The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker
- "Ideas, inspiration, and provocations for creativity, work, and staying human."
- This newsletter serves me regular reminders to be mindful (of specific things). Rob's suggestions to pay attention to things you normally wouldn't often turn into fun exercises and games. I only wish he kept the emails a bit shorter; they're jam-packed with links and it takes me forever to finish them.
Oh, and a tip to make managing your subscriptions easier: if you have Gmail, I recommend using the plus addressing feature to differentiate newsletters from your other, more urgent mail. That way, you can filter out your newsletters when you need to focus on important things, and filter for them when you're bored and want something to read. I think most email clients have some sort of feature like this, so take advantage of it!