My recent Twitter success, which saw my account go from zero to over two thousand followers in under a week, has highlighted my ongoing need for a better email system. My audience is growing faster than ever before and my incoming email volume reflects this. Achieving Inbox Zero is, according to an ever growing number of GTD users, the only real way forward, applying rules to all incoming messages and sweeping them away in any number of folders and systems, the only way forward.

I don’t entirely disagree with that approach, especially if you are fully comfortable with the slightly obsessive GTD regime in all other areas of you life. But I’m not. For me, GTD is one of those tools that needs to be modified and massaged in order to work. Purists would argue that my approach to GTD isn’t actually GTD at all, but some illegitimate offspring of GTD and plain, old fashioned, common sense.

And, as you might expect, my personal approach to email management isn’t exactly Inbox Zero. It’s a carefully aligned combination of tools that allow me to address a number of problems, including managing thousands of legitimate emails a day, whilst keeping my email inbox clean and stress free.

I’m not claiming that the following system is perfect but since it’s implementation a few days ago it has worked flawlessly. Your mileage might vary but I’m confident enough to recommend it to anyone who wants to take a slightly different approach to email management.

The root of my problem, as is the case for so many people, is that I let email dominate too many areas of my life. And the problem of email domination grows roughly in proportion to the growth of its accessibility.

Having consolidated all my email accounts, from all my domains, into one manageable Gmail domain account some time ago, I am already in the very positive position of only having one email account to check. All my email is in one place. And because Gmail has such wonderful spam filters all of my email is clear and spam free.

But it is still too accessible. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? How can accessibility be a bad thing?

I’ll explain. Having access to all my email on all of my platforms and systems, from my Nokia E71, my Powerbook, my Samsung NC10, my iMac and any other device that happens to be on my desk, on my lap or in my hand at the time, is too much of a temptation. If all my email was only available from one location, the iMac in my office for example, I would only be able to check that email at times that suited me.

Of course, self discipline could solve all of these problems. But email addiction is a real problem. Not as serious as a more conventional addiction, but a problem all the same. Ask any smoker if they would find it easier to stop smoking if cigarettes were not available to them and they would all undoubtedly answer yes.

Making my email available only when I want it to be available, only at times that I have predetermined to be in my best interest, automatically and swiftly takes away a large chunk of the problem. Email can’t intrude on my life outside of my office if I can’t access it outside of my office.

Let me restate that last point just in case anyone thinks I made an error.

The easiest way to prevent email from taking over my life is to actively prevent that email from reaching the areas of my life that I do not want to be taken over.

And the simplest way to achieve that is to access my Gmail domain account via POP3, downloading all email to one email client that resides on my main computer, currently my iMac sitting in my office, tucked away on the third floor of my house.

Once the email is downloaded it is deleted from the server. I do not want copies of my email hanging around on Google’s servers, beckoning me to access them from other locations.

As a precautionary measure I also configure my Gmail domain account to forward a copy of all of my emails to a separate POP3 account, downloaded to a separate email client at regular intervals, purely for backup and just in case purposes.

Restricting email access solves one problem. It prevents email from encroaching where it doesn’t belong. But this is only the start of the email management story.

Once those emails hit my email client they have to be processed. And processing, unless it is automated and scalable, is a pain.

I process my emails based on the relationship between the sender and me, classifying every sender as either a friend, a stranger or a machine.

Machine sent emails, lists, notifications, WordPress moderation requests and any other emails that have been sent by something other than a human being are immediately diverted using simple rules into a separate folder, marked as read. I don’t need to check these so they don’t even register in my Inbox. I have a digital assistant collate the most important ones and present them to me as a digest once a day, at a time that suits me, with integrated links to each email just in case any of them warrant further inspection. Nutshell mail is so good at keeping my Inbox free from the thousands of social networking notifications, Twitter notifications for instance, that I am amazed that such a system isn’t in wider use. It’s free, fully configurable and very clever. Check it out at nutshellmail.com. I think you’ll like it.

Any email from a stranger, either a new machine or a new human being is processed immediately and very simply. If the email comes from a machine the sender is added to my machine rule and the email disappears into the machine folder. If the email comes from a new human being then, unless there is a clear reason not to reply to them, the sender is added to my address book and the email forwarded to yet another digital assistant that I will detail in a moment.

Emails from friends, defined as anyone who is in my address book, are automatically forwarded to my Highrise account. In addition to this, all email I send is also automatically copied to Highrise where the information in that email is magically added to the relevant contacts page. Highrise is my new online secret weapon. I’ve used it before but spent the last few days really pushing it, really trying to find out how it can help manage my email mountain.

Here’s a quick quotation from the 37signals website that attemtps to explain Highrise in a few lines.

Highrise is the answer to the avalanche: So many people. So many phone calls, emails, notes, follow-ups, and tasks. Who is this person again? When did we last speak? What did we talk about? Has anyone else in my company talked to this person? What’s supposed to happen next? Highrise is here to keep track of it all.

The best quote, however, comes from the Washington Post.

Highrise does nearly everything a personal secretary might do except go out for coffee and pick up our dry cleaning.

Here’s the key to using Highrise to wrestle back control over your communication. Don’t think of your email client as a place to keep information, think of it only as a messaging system. Send and recieve email in your email client. Manage and reference the information in those emails in a proper contact management system.

The light bulb over my head moment occured when I realised that Highrise allows me to deal with email with reference not to time but to relationship. Each person I know is listed in my Highrise account along with records of our email conversations, all sorted automatically and tagged on the fly with any extra information I wish to add.

Highrise has changed the way I work. Even in the last two days it has allowed me to free myself from email tyranny and take control of the mine of information that my email client was previously hiding.

A number of Highrise account levels are available, starting at free which is surprisingly usable but limited to two hundred and fifty contacts. I use the solo account at a cost of $29 per month with a more generous contact limit of twenty thousand, three gigabytes of storage and more premium features that I am only just starting to get to grips with.

Get a free trial of Highrise at highrisehq.com and take back control.