Last 12 months, I introduced you 19 days of recent (to you) productiveness instruments for 2019. This 12 months, I am taking a special strategy: constructing an atmosphere that can will let you be extra productive within the new 12 months, utilizing instruments chances are you’ll or might not already be utilizing.
Sync your e mail domestically with OfflineIMAP
I’ve a love/hate relationship with e mail. I really like the best way it permits me to speak with folks everywhere in the world. But, like lots of you, I get quite a lot of mail, a lot of it from lists in addition to spammers, advertisers, and the like. And it builds up.
Almost all of the instruments I’ve tried (outdoors of the large mail suppliers) that work rather well with giant quantities of mail have one factor in frequent: all of them depend on an area copy of your mail saved in Maildir format. And essentially the most great tool for that’s OfflineIMAP. OfflineIMAP is a Python script that mirrors IMAP mailboxes to an area Maildir folder tree. I take advantage of it to create an area copy of my mail and maintain it in sync. Most Linux distributions embody it, and it’s out there by way of Python’s pip bundle supervisor.
The pattern minimal configuration file is an effective template to start out with; start by copying it to ~/.offlineimaprc. Mine seems one thing like this:
[general]
accounts = NativeSync
ui=Quiet
autorefresh=30[Account LocalSync]
localrepository = LocalMail
remoterepository = MirrorIMAP[Repository MirrorIMAP]
kind = IMAP
remotehost = my.mail.server
remoteuser = myusername
remotepass = mypassword
auth_mechanisms = LOGIN
createfolder = true
ssl = sure
sslcacertfile = OS-DEFAULT[Repository LocalMail]
kind = Maildir
localfolders = ~/Maildir
sep = .
createfolder = true
What my configuration does is outline two repositories: the distant IMAP server and the native Maildir folder. There can also be the Account that tells OfflineIMAP what to sync when it runs. You can outline a number of accounts linked to completely different repositories. This lets you copy from one IMAP server to a different as a backup, along with making a duplicate domestically.
The first run of OfflineIMAP will take some time when you have quite a lot of mail. But as soon as it’s performed, future runs take a lot much less time. You can even run OfflineIMAP as a cron job (my desire) or as a daemon continually syncing between repositories. The documentation covers all of this, in addition to superior configuration choices for issues like Gmail.
Now that my mail is copied domestically, there’s a complete vary of instruments I can work with to hurry up looking, submitting, and managing mail. And I will discuss that tomorrow.