How I Think About Email

I was introduced to email at a time when the choice was simple: Hotmail, Yahoo, or Lycos. There were no productivity systems, no inbox zero debates — just messages going back and forth, often full of jokes forwarded endlessly between friends.

I became slightly obsessed.

Not because email was powerful, but because it was personal. It felt direct in a way nothing else did at the time.

When Gmail launched — invite-only, with people selling access codes online — it felt like a genuine shift. Gmail quickly became my favourite: conversation view, a clean interface, and the idea that archiving was better than deleting. That mindset stuck with me.

Since then, I’ve always been on the lookout for a better way to use email. Not because email is broken — but because most people never stop to think about how they use it.

Email isn’t replaceable

Social media has never replaced email, and it never will.

Email sits underneath everything else: account access, receipts, notifications, updates, long-form communication, and identity itself. Platforms come and go, but email persists.

What frustrates me is how casually it’s treated — especially by younger users. My daughter once showed me her inbox with over 3,000 unread emails. Not because she didn’t care, but because email had become a dumping ground rather than a tool.

That isn’t a user failure. It’s a design failure.

Email is how I think and work

I use email as a task list, a reminder system, a way to stay informed, and a way to talk directly with readers of my blog. It’s not just communication — it’s part of how I organise my life.

That’s why bad interfaces bother me so much. Poor defaults create stress. Clutter hides important things. And when email goes wrong, it quietly drains attention every single day.

I work towards inbox zero as much as possible — not as a productivity badge, but as a way to keep email usable.

For me, inbox zero doesn’t mean replying to everything immediately or treating email like a to-do app. It means knowing that what’s in my inbox actually needs attention, rather than being a backlog of noise.

Inbox zero isn’t about discipline. It’s about design.

Control matters more than clever features

When that control isn’t offered, people add their own layer. Tools like DuckDuckGo Email Protection reflect this shift by letting people use forwarding addresses for sign-ups, reduce tracking, and step away from high-volume senders without touching their primary inbox — effectively recreating the flexibility that preference controls should provide.

One design decision I keep coming back to is how marketing emails handle unsubscribes.

Too many emails now offer a single, blunt option: unsubscribe entirely. What’s missing are basic preference controls — reducing frequency, pausing messages, or choosing what type of emails you actually want to receive.

I don’t think this reflects how people actually use email. Most people don’t want to stop hearing from a brand altogether — they just want fewer emails, or different ones. When that option isn’t available, unsubscribe becomes the default, even when it isn’t what the subscriber intended.

Good email design gives people control, not ultimatums.

This matters because inboxes are not static. How much email someone wants changes over time, depending on context, workload, and relevance. Design that assumes a permanent, all-or-nothing decision ignores that reality — and pushes people toward disengagement rather than adjustment.

This idea underpins much of how I think about inbox design, email fatigue, and long-term trust — and why unsubscribe-only email design so often misses what subscribers actually want.

Privacy is practical, not ideological

I no longer use Gmail as my primary inbox, largely due to privacy concerns. But I also understand why it remains so popular.

It’s fast, familiar, and deeply integrated into how many people live and work online.

Privacy, for me, isn’t about absolutism. It’s about reducing unnecessary exposure, understanding trade-offs, and choosing tools that align with how I want email to behave.

That’s why I currently use Proton Mail as my main email provider. It strikes a balance that works for me: strong privacy protections, a clean interface, and features that don’t fight my workflow.

The tools I use — and why

I don’t use tools because they’re “the best”. I use them because they reinforce the behaviours I want from email.

• Primary inbox: Proton Mail, for privacy, clarity, and calm defaults
• Devices: A MacBook Air and iPhone for personal use, where email feels deliberate — something I check and process, not something that constantly demands attention.
• Work email: Outlook on a PC — which I initially disliked, but now understand. There’s a reason Microsoft Outlook is so widely used in organisations, and I plan to write about that separately.

My relationship with these tools is shaped by how deeply I understand how email works.

In a previous life, I was self-employed and built email tools and integrations for businesses. That’s where I learned how email actually works under the hood: DNS, SMTP, delivery, DKIM, SPF, and all the invisible plumbing people only notice when it breaks.

I’ve built and maintained email marketing systems, worked with bulk sending, and used services like Amazon SES in custom integrations. That work permanently changed how I look at email — especially when companies ignore best practice.

Working that close to email also made the importance of privacy and security impossible to ignore. When you see how messages are routed, logged, filtered, and sometimes mishandled at scale, you stop thinking of email as “just messages” and start thinking about exposure, metadata, and trust. That experience shaped how cautious I am about who handles my email — and why I care so much about defaults, data handling, and long-term control.

What most senders get wrong about marketing email

I have very little patience for marketing email that treats the inbox as a dumping ground rather than a place for considered communication.

That usually shows up as:

• Poorly designed messages
• Little respect for frequency or relevance
• Treating email as cheap or disposable
• Ignoring long-established best practice

Email works best when it’s boring, predictable, and respectful. When senders get it wrong, the damage isn’t dramatic — it’s subtle. Trust erodes. Messages get ignored. Engagement drops silently.

Unsubscribe rates don’t tell the full story of disengagement.

Owning your domain changes everything

I’ve had more email addresses than I can count. I’ve switched providers repeatedly over the years, always searching for something better.

The biggest lesson I learned — eventually — is that owning your own domain changes the balance of power.

When you control your domain, your email address becomes portable. Providers can change. Tools can evolve. Your identity stays put.

Everyone should own their own domain. It’s one of the simplest ways to take long-term control of your email — and one of the lessons I learned the hard way.

Why I write about email

I’ve spent the last 30 years being the person people come to with email questions: troubleshooting, recommendations, explanations, or just trying to understand why something isn’t working.

How different people use email fascinates me. So does its history, its role in privacy and security, and the quiet ways it shapes how we communicate.

My goal is simple: to write thoughtfully about email and related services — not to chase trends, but to help people make sense of a tool they rely on every day.

If I could do that full-time, I would.

Until then, this page exists to explain where I’m coming from — and why email, when it’s done well, still matters.

More about me