haha, just read your article - hilariously relatable. You do feel like a god when you reach inbox zero! Let me know how it goes once you try it… maybe you’ll feel like a god every day!!
I recently cleaned out/organized my inbox with a Python script that calls Claude to label emails and move them out of my inbox. I also set up a nuclear “delete now” option for a few senders that keep emailing after I asked to unsubscribe.
Now it runs automatically every few hours. It was great—I was able to set up super-customized labels.
I was a fun development project and I learned a lot about Google’e email API. But, honestly, had I known about Forage, I probably would have just subscribed. 🤣
Love that you built that! I actually did something similar with Google Apps Script - had my newsletters moved to a custom label, and ran them through GPT to send me a daily summary. But the summaries only ever pulled in like 4 emails, so it kinda defeated the whole point :))
The good news is that Forage blocks unwanted senders permanently, so that follow-up spam just stops, and the summaries cover everything. The best of both worlds.
Interesting, hadn’t heard of this! My ocd doesn’t let me have any unread emails at the end of each of each day and I have a ton of rules to automatically clean clutter, but if this works, it’s way simpler!
I feel you totally :)) my OCD’s the same. But lately, I could never hit inbox zero, so that low-key nagging stress in the back of my brain was just there all day long.
Substack, for example, I’ve only set emails to come with new subscribers, and all Substack emails automatically get marked read and moved to a separate folder for when I want to dig in to them.
But it’s still pretty cumbersome haha, I’m gonna try your trick
You should get 5minutes added to your day for every hour you save me ;)
That Substack rule is smart though. I tried something similar with Google Apps Script, but ended up reading less - which wasn’t the goal. Let me know how it goes if you try Forage!
Really appreciate you sharing this. Email overload is so real, and it helps to hear such a down-to-earth take on it. I’ll definitely check out Forage Mail.
Email overload quietly drains focus, time, and energy—and your breakdown made the hidden cost painfully clear. Loved the real-world test of Forage too. Might be time I gave it a shot.
Thanks, Petar! I guess that’s the case with a lot of things we do on autopilot, they all carry a cost, but we don’t stop long enough to notice it. Let me know if you try it, hope it helps!
I’ve been guilty of trying to brute-force email for years, and the cost in focus and decision fatigue is so real... I've been using Spark for a while and it helps me archive emails in bulk quickly. They're not really marketing AI on the front-end but it's been super helpful for now.
This's a fantastic solution -something I've been searching all these years. But funnily enough, like all roadblocks, I hit a huge one here: can't access the payment system- the reason why I can neither pay or receive money for content I publish here and consume. That apart, this is a real god-sent to someone like me who receive 720 mails a day and has nearly 23,000 emails almost killing my inbox. Thanks for pointing at the solution. It's great to read your posts.
wow, 720 emails a day?! Forage was made for situations exactly like that. I know Stripe isn’t available in all regions yet, but have you tried it now with Forage and it didn’t work?
Yes, I tried their payment system. It redirects me to Chase Bank in the US. The alternatives they give are all US Banks. I have written to the team to see if they accept alternative payments like Paypal. One more think: it’s incredibly accessible with screen readers.
hey Neil, Outlook support is on the roadmap & coming soon. Right now, Forage works directly with Gmail, so all the organization it does (like sorting into folders/labels) happens inside the Gmail platform.
If your Outlook is connected to Gmail via IMAP, you might still see those folders and changes reflected, but probably not as seamlessly as within native Gmail.
You can test it out anyway, it takes one minute to set it up
omg i just wrote a bit about reaching Inbox Zero lolol
i have to check this out!!
haha, just read your article - hilariously relatable. You do feel like a god when you reach inbox zero! Let me know how it goes once you try it… maybe you’ll feel like a god every day!!
Very helpful review, thanks!
I recently cleaned out/organized my inbox with a Python script that calls Claude to label emails and move them out of my inbox. I also set up a nuclear “delete now” option for a few senders that keep emailing after I asked to unsubscribe.
Now it runs automatically every few hours. It was great—I was able to set up super-customized labels.
I was a fun development project and I learned a lot about Google’e email API. But, honestly, had I known about Forage, I probably would have just subscribed. 🤣
Love that you built that! I actually did something similar with Google Apps Script - had my newsletters moved to a custom label, and ran them through GPT to send me a daily summary. But the summaries only ever pulled in like 4 emails, so it kinda defeated the whole point :))
The good news is that Forage blocks unwanted senders permanently, so that follow-up spam just stops, and the summaries cover everything. The best of both worlds.
The anti-spam feature sounds cool!
Interesting, hadn’t heard of this! My ocd doesn’t let me have any unread emails at the end of each of each day and I have a ton of rules to automatically clean clutter, but if this works, it’s way simpler!
I feel you totally :)) my OCD’s the same. But lately, I could never hit inbox zero, so that low-key nagging stress in the back of my brain was just there all day long.
What kind of rules are you using?
Substack, for example, I’ve only set emails to come with new subscribers, and all Substack emails automatically get marked read and moved to a separate folder for when I want to dig in to them.
But it’s still pretty cumbersome haha, I’m gonna try your trick
You should get 5minutes added to your day for every hour you save me ;)
Haha I’ll gladly take those 5 minutes!!
That Substack rule is smart though. I tried something similar with Google Apps Script, but ended up reading less - which wasn’t the goal. Let me know how it goes if you try Forage!
Also I like the time value calculation, I think people don’t think of time as currency and it really is the most precious currency we all have
Yep, totally. I also catch myself doing that 😅
This is really helpful, Daria. I think a lot of people face this exact pain point: struggling to manage their emails effectively.
I’m one of them: my inbox has over 11,000 unread emails 😅
The struggle is real!! Curious if you end up trying it and what your first feeling is after :))
haven’t tried it yet, Daria, gonna give it a shot soon and let you know
Really appreciate how you broke down the time actually lost to handling incoming emails, and how clearly you highlighted Forage’s strengths!
I’ll definitely be referring back to your article when I dive into writing about email automation experiments!
Thank you, Jenny, it really is such a rabbit hole once you start seeing how much time we actually spend in the inbox. Looking fwd to your experiments.
How cool!!! Email management has always seemed a bit scary to me, too! Forage is now on my radar for that.
Yeah same, I don’t know why, but in my head I always pictured it just mass-deleting all my emails :)) Can’t wait to hear how it works for you!
The biggest cost of email chaos is the constant mental drag.
exactly
Really appreciate you sharing this. Email overload is so real, and it helps to hear such a down-to-earth take on it. I’ll definitely check out Forage Mail.
Let me know how it goes, Sae! Curious to hear your feedback on it
Email overload quietly drains focus, time, and energy—and your breakdown made the hidden cost painfully clear. Loved the real-world test of Forage too. Might be time I gave it a shot.
Thanks, Petar! I guess that’s the case with a lot of things we do on autopilot, they all carry a cost, but we don’t stop long enough to notice it. Let me know if you try it, hope it helps!
I'll have to keep an eye on this!
I’ve been guilty of trying to brute-force email for years, and the cost in focus and decision fatigue is so real... I've been using Spark for a while and it helps me archive emails in bulk quickly. They're not really marketing AI on the front-end but it's been super helpful for now.
Feel you, the email chaos is real :)) Curious what you’ll think of Forage if you try it out!
I'll add it to the long list of tools to try out ;)
Someone should do a research on Jira stories too.
unread Jira tickets sounds like the devs’ version of inbox anxiety :))
This's a fantastic solution -something I've been searching all these years. But funnily enough, like all roadblocks, I hit a huge one here: can't access the payment system- the reason why I can neither pay or receive money for content I publish here and consume. That apart, this is a real god-sent to someone like me who receive 720 mails a day and has nearly 23,000 emails almost killing my inbox. Thanks for pointing at the solution. It's great to read your posts.
wow, 720 emails a day?! Forage was made for situations exactly like that. I know Stripe isn’t available in all regions yet, but have you tried it now with Forage and it didn’t work?
Yes, I tried their payment system. It redirects me to Chase Bank in the US. The alternatives they give are all US Banks. I have written to the team to see if they accept alternative payments like Paypal. One more think: it’s incredibly accessible with screen readers.
That’s great to know. Hopefully you can find a workaround with another payment method
I might use copilot for the business accounts
email is a struggle. I have 6 email accounts. One is a gmail that I have added to my outlook365.
If i add forage to my gmail on the gmail platform, will all the work that forage does show up as folders on my outlook?
hey Neil, Outlook support is on the roadmap & coming soon. Right now, Forage works directly with Gmail, so all the organization it does (like sorting into folders/labels) happens inside the Gmail platform.
If your Outlook is connected to Gmail via IMAP, you might still see those folders and changes reflected, but probably not as seamlessly as within native Gmail.
You can test it out anyway, it takes one minute to set it up