Filter messages like this

I love this set of options in Gmail. I get more unsolicited email from publishers, vendors, and PR firms than, than ... well, more than hyperbole can describe. It's the rare morning I check either my school or personal accounts not to find a half-dozen or more messages about some product or service or information that my teachers, my readers, my family, even I, are sure to find interesting.

Sheesh.

So it has become my mission to see how many of these solicitations I can only view just once. While some organizations provide "unsubscribe from the list" links, I am a little reluctant to respond to them. By replying, am I just letting someone know there is an actual human being at a particular email address? And that email address might have a monetary value to a marketer.

So instead, I use the filtering option in Gmail. I use it to move not the email address, but to move anything from that email domain directly to the trash. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

For example, a message this morning came from one Brandon Latino <blation@ifsleasing.com>. So instead of creating a rule just for Brandon, I create the rule to move to trash anything from @ifsleasing.com. That way when Brandon moves to greener pastures, his successor will also be filtered.

Increasingly, I feel my life has become a battle between me and the world of marketing. I literally no longer answer my work phone unless there is a caller ID associated with call. 90% of my postal mail I recycle without even a glance. I use every ad blocker possible on social media sites. I no longer walk through the vendor areas of conferences. I no longer watch commercial TV.

And I still feel overwhelmed.

Any tips for keeping one's sanity in a marketing-saturated world?

Comments

[Ryan Collins]

What I did was set up my inbox filter to only show email from a few select domains, including my school district's domain. Everything else automatically goes into an outside email folder for me to peruse at my leisure.

The secret is a hyphen to negate the search:

-from:{ @schooldomain.org @domain1.org someone@somewhere.com }
Skip Inbox, label Outside Email.

Only emails from people in @schooldomain.org and @domain1.org show up in my inbox, along with email from someone@somewhere.com. Everything else goes into Outside email.

[Doug Johnson]

Thanks, Ryan. Your method sounds far less time consuming!

Doug

[Ryan Collins]

I had to revisit my filter, and it's confusing how you set that up. The filter goes in the box "Has the words". I don't know how it works there, but it does. :-)

[Jim Randolph]

My predecessor in my media center was a genius. There's a phone out here in the media center and one back in my office (which I only go into to hang up my coat and check if there's voicemail).

The one in the media center doesn't have voice mail and I rarely answer it. That's the number I give to all the marketers and distributors you're talking about.

The other one, in my office, has voice mail but I on;y give it out to actual people. Parents and other media specialists are about the only folks who leave messages there. It's great!

[Doug Johnson]

I need one of those phones that doesn't have voice mail!

Doug