Thanks to SaneBox for sponsoring BrettTerpstra.com this week! Rather than the typical sponsored post, I’ve opened up the blog to a guest post from SaneBox’s Thomas Yuan. Not a typical thing for me, but I’m a huge fan of SaneBox and Thomas’ tools are a perfect fit for my readers (and my own preferences). Please enjoy!

Picture this: There’s a constant stream of messages filling your inbox, from notifications to urgent memos to mailing lists you joined 10 years ago. But instead of getting distracted, feeling overwhelmed, or spending hours sifting through them, every email is filed right where you need it.

This is the beauty of implementing email management tools. With the right email stack, you can put the most labor-intensive tasks on autopilot and waste much less time in your inbox.

Here’s how I built my own low-maintenance workflow — and the tools that help me do it.

The Joy of an Email Stack That Doesn’t Suck

Without filters and workflows, your inbox is a messy stream of information and requests, all with different levels of urgency. If you try to organize your inbox manually, you’ll waste hours every week on a never-ending battle… as soon as you deal with one email, three more pop up in its place!

That’s why an email stack that leverages AI is so powerful. It can take the hard work out of managing your email, but you still control the rules.

Here are the essential ingredients for my own email stack:

  • Powerful filtering: I need to see exactly what’s urgent without being distracted by newsletters, calendar invites, notifications, and other messages that can wait.
  • Features to help me prioritize: I like to queue up each day’s high-priority tasks and take distractions out of sight. This prevents me from getting dragged into the guilty mindset of “I’ll just tackle one more message…”
  • Learning support: I subscribe to a ton of newsletters, from product releases to tech blogs, but they’re useless if they simply drift down my Inbox.

My 2025 Email Productivity Stack

1. MailMate + SaneBox = efficient, customizable inbox management

MailMate is my favorite email client on Mac and if you live by keyboard shortcuts it might be perfect for you, too. I use it to set up a tagging system to help organize my emails.

SaneBox, which works across different email clients, is the perfect complement to MailMate. It adds a trainable intelligence layer that automatically organizes my email into categories. Here’s how I get the most out of SaneBox:

  • Trainable AI: To train SaneBox, I drag an email to one of my folders. The next email from that sender will show up in that folder. Easy.
  • BlackHole: I want to unsubscribe in one click, but I don’t want to click on risky unsubscribe links. BlackHole does the dirty work for me, I just drag an email to the BlackHole and I’ll never hear from that sender again.
  • Reminders and Snooze: These SaneBox features are distraction-busters. They allow me to set custom reminders, or simply snooze an email until I’m ready to deal with it.

2. Streamlining my stack (another win for SaneBox)

Simplicity is the key. Your stack should reduce the number of tools you need, and work well with your existing email client and workflows.

By adding SaneBox to my toolkit, I no longer needed to use inbox cleaning services like Clean Email or attachment cleaner tools to clear space. The Deep Clean feature is already built into SaneBox and I periodically use it to clear out old emails and free up storage space.

SaneBox also fits in with the rest of my stack, with no duplication of effort. There’s no need to rebuild filters in MailMate or any other client, my email behaves consistently everywhere.

3. Emailing faster and more decisively with snippet tools

Whether it’s an introduction or a polite “no thanks,” no one likes typing the same replies over and over again. Tools like TextExpander and Text Blaze are great additions to any email strategy. I use them to create pre-defined snippets for quick replies, and I can activate them with just a few keystrokes.

Bonus email hack: Turning my inbox into a personal news reader!

My favorite hack is filtering newsletters into a SaneReading folder. With MailMate’s ability to display one inbox per sender, I can create a “news reader” experience right within my inbox.

My Daily Email Routine

You need a solid routine to maximize the benefits of your email stack, otherwise you might still dip in and out of your inbox and waste time throughout the day. Here’s the email routine that works for me:

Morning Review
In the morning, I perform a quick “Inbox triage,” following the Eisenhower Matrix: I reply to anything time-sensitive, hit snooze on emails that can wait, and set reminders for emails that I need to handle within a specific time frame. It doesn’t take long because the only things waiting for me in my Inbox are important: VIP senders, my family, and anything else that I’ve trained SaneBox’s AI to recognize as urgent.
Midday Check-in
I usually check my inbox again around lunch to make sure nothing time-sensitive has come in. If I see anything new in my inbox that isn’t important, I drag it to my SaneLater folder. This trains SaneBox’s AI to file future messages from that sender in my SaneLater folder, so they don’t clog up my inbox.
Evening Email Blast
I’m most decisive in the evenings, so that’s when I blast through most of my emails. I start with emails that I’ve snoozed earlier in the day, and I fire off some replies. Then I review my Digest; this is a daily update from SaneBox, like an executive summary of all the emails SaneBox considers non-urgent. I save time by bulk-archiving or mass-deleting messages, and Digest gives me confidence that nothing important is slipping through the cracks. Then comes the fun part: I can look at my SaneReading folder and catch up on my newsletters!

This way, I keep on top of my email but it’s working for me, not the other way around. My inbox doesn’t dominate my day.

Thanks again to SaneBox, both for existing and for sponsoring. Check it out today and save $25 off!