One of the many benefits of going to in-person sprints is you get to see how other people use their computers, and you can learn some workflow tricks from them. Or, you might notice areas of inefficiency and share tips of your own.This post will be about the latter, on the subject of email.Because during the sprint, I observed multiple people using email on their laptops in ways that are slow or ineffective:Logging into webmail in a web browserSwitching between multiple webmail sites to manage multiple email accountsClicking on buttons in the webmail UI to delete or reply to messagesIf you recognize yourself here, there’s a better way, I promise. And I’d like to help you achieve it!Back in 2024, I wrote about my email workflow and offered some general tips for managing email overload in KDE. I’m going to write more in depth about this topic, today starting with…Use an email client app.KDE has one: KMail. If it works well for you, use it! If it doesn’t, use Thunderbird instead, it’s fine. Don’t feel guilty for not using a piece of KDE software. Nobody’s gonna excommunicate you from KDE! I’m officially giving you permission.Maybe you use an email client on your desktop but haven’t set one up on your travel laptop yet? Well, it’s time!Because the important part is to consistently use an email client app of some sort. Why?Way better for multiple accountsMost of us have 2 or more email accounts. With webmail, this becomes a pain that scales linearly with the number of accounts.With an email client app, you can manage multiple accounts’ worth of emails in one UI. When all your accounts are managed from one app, your brain doesn’t need to learn and remember multiple UIs, and and opening new email accounts doesn’t scale the mental burden at all.Faster to useAn email client app lets you interact with emails using learnable and consistent keyboard shortcuts. Processing emails this way is super fast, so you can get done quickly and go back to something useful. Email sucks; life’s too short to waste time on it.Easier to accessYou can access the email client app easily using the Task Switcher, Overview, or Alt+Tab, rather than letting those webmail tabs get buried among your 75 normal browser tabs and 10 pinned tabs.Easier to leave email modeQuit the email client app when you want to stop receiving emails.For webmail, you’re tempted to leave it open in a tab forever, which means to avoid being constantly tortured with email notification, you’ll have to turn them off entirely, so you stop noticing emails when they arrive. This is problematic for the “keep my email open all day” approach where the whole point is being able to action new emails immediately so they don’t pile up.Using an app that can be turned off also facilitates being a “check email once a day” kind of person, if that’s your jam. Open the app, check your email, action the important ones, delete or archive all of them, then close the app. You can carve out 5-20 minutes for email, be free of email for the rest of the day, and still keep on top of everything!Using good tools is enjoyableImagine trying to manage versions or debug code without git or gdb. It would take ages and the results wouldn’t be as good. Proficiency with these tools makes you feel like a bird soaring above the clouds or a wizard effortlessly wielding powerful magic, not some clod stumbling around in the mud.Email clients are the same way. Learn powerful tools to bolster your professional skills and feel better about the process of participating in KDE, not just the outcomes.The Thunderbird email client is the foundation of my email system. In conjunction with other techniques — which I briefly described in the earlier post and will flesh out in more detail over the coming weeks — this is currently my email situation:Those are all of my emails across 5 accounts. Here are just my KDE emails: As you can see, this is completely manageable. It takes practically no effort to keep it this way, and there’s no feeling of dread when checking emails in the morning. If you’re drowning in email, you can get here too, I promise.It starts with using an email client. If you aren’t regularly using one yet, it will take some up-front work, and some re-training, but it’s worth it: you’ll spend less time and mental resources on email and more of it on what actually matters — without taking the easy path of neglecting email and being perceived as a person who’s hard to contact or unreliable.So get started today with KMail or Thunderbird!