Now that Gmail is out of beta, here are two suggestions for improvement:
1. Oldest first. I want to be able to sort my email so that the oldest is first on the list. That will make it harder to ignore or forget about. I can use the reward of seeing my latest email as inducement to deal with the oldest email. (I often bundle unpleasant and pleasant tasks: taking vitamins and drinking kombucha, doing pushups and listening to music, standing on one foot and watching Survivor.)
2. Delayed send (also called second thoughts). I want to be able to send email after a delay — say, one day. This has two advantages: it slows down the correspondence, and it gives me a chance to reconsider. An earlier email program I used had something like this and I was often glad I could revise what I’d written before it was sent.
More The Gmail Undo Send feature (available in Labs) gives you about 20 seconds to change your mind. Better than nothing but not nearly long enough.
Seth
Try Boomerang for Gmail.
https://www.baydin.com/boomerang4gmail/
It’s a Gmail plugin that lets you schedule when you send emails. Somewhat bizarrely, it also lets you schedule when to receive emails, or at least when to have them reappear having been already received.
Thinking about it, a (less than optimal) solution to your first problem is to also pick up your Gmail in an actual email client, e.g. Thunderbird, using Gmail’s POP download facility. That way, when you need to view your emails in chronological order, you could do it in Thunderbird.
Not great but better than nothing.
Mike, Gmail also supports IMAP, which has advantages over POP. For a discussion, see:
https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=75725
I used to use a 10-minute delay on all outgoing emails. Not as long as the day you suggest, but long enough to realise if I’ve made a major boo-boo and retrieve it.
The closest GMail has is the “Undo Send” lab, which gives you up to 30s to reconsider. I still often un-send and edit emails within that time. Unfortunately as soon as you navigate anywhere else you lose the undo option, but it’s better than nothing.
In case you missed it, here’s a funny piece about email:
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/2010/10/25/101025sh_shouts_marks
I agree, Seth re: delay. When I’m in a bad mood I sometimes later regret some messages. Right now the 10 second delay is pretty useless. It’s usually after some pondering that I realize I should have edited. A programmable time is good, as is a day. You’d need a list of “pending” messages. All in all, Gmail’s pretty good, esp. for free.
Seth,
Gmail already has these features, almost. Look into the Labs add-on called “Undo Send”, it it will allow you to delay an outbound message up to 30 seconds. Unfortunately no loger than that.
Also, you can sort by oldest but the option is only available after a certain number of messages. Go to All Mail then look at the top right. You should see: “1 – 100 of 49833 Older › Oldest »”.
–Ed
You can change the settings for the undo send in gmail. You can have up to 30 seconds to undo the send. Just look in the settings portion and change the option. 30 seconds is not much, but it is better than 10.