Habithack: Communication
I’m going to start with one of the biggest time savers first, communication. To be more precise tacking email. Not a week goes by that I don’t hear a conversation including the line “Which email did you send it to because I didn’t get it”. If you take the extra time to set it up, it won’t matter. The two biggest problems with email are having multiple addresses and having no filters (or bad filters) set up, so lets tackle the first of those two issues today.
The best thing to do for those who use more than one email address is to get a client. Some people like to use Microsoft outlook or Outlook Express, I recommend Mozilla Thunderbird because it’s clean, functional and easy to add extensions to if needed. For those of you that use a shared computer the client still requires the use of a password, so put your minds at ease, nobody is reading your email.
When setting up an email address in a client, the main components you need to know are user name, password, pop3 address and SMTP address. These aren’t hard to get, the user name and passwords ar the same you would be using for checking your email in a browser. For addresses they’re usually just something like “mail.website.com”, and can most often be found under one of the options tabs of mail settings. For some larger, free services however such as Hotmail and Gmail, they use longer addresses. I recommend checking out the webmail extension to simplify setting them up if they’re you’re service of choice.
Once you have your first email address set up, you’re more than half way done. When you have that working go to File->New->Account and put all the into in again. Now both email accounts will have all the emails coming into the same spot: You’ve just cut your loading, logging and waiting time in half. If you want to add another email account, you’ll cut it down even more. I recommend to add all of your emails to a client, it will save you lots of time.
The reason that I recommended Thunderbird is because it can add extensions and themes really easily, and these are what puts this client on the top of the list. You can see all the extensions and themes on the add-on site. Here are some useful ones that I’ve found useful:
MinimizeToTray: Allows you to minimize the Thunderbird window to the system tray and alerts you when a new email comes in.
FoxyTunes: Allows you to control your music player from within your mail client. Also available for Firefox.
Crossover X theme: Nice Macish theme. And blue 
Another quick Thunderbird tip: You can use Thunderbird Portable to install your client on a flash drive. Works with all the same functions and no need to be strapped down to one computer. Great for home and work.
Tomorrow’s topic is Email filters: have the client organize all of your mail for you as it comes in!
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