About a month ago, I was onboarded onto Superhuman. Thus far I have found no reason to argue with the validity of the company's slogan that it is "the fastest email experience ever made". I heard Superhuman CEO, Rahul Vohra, interviewed by Harry Stebbings on The Twenty Minute VC podcast and he seems to be taking an extraordinarily smart approach through the company's early days. The thing I remember most is how they are strategically ignoring feedback from customers who do not most love the product (by definition, most customers), despite the natural inclination that many founders have to try to please most of their customers.
As I have become accustomed to my new way of email, there are many benefits that stand out. In no particular order, I have enjoyed the read receipts (which are device-specific with time stamps), the many keyboard shortcuts (from "mark done" to "remind me later"), and the ability to flip through inboxes (email addresses) by simply pressing alt+1, alt+2, etc..
The ability to seamlessly move across inboxes has made me more inclined to create separate email addresses not only to represent separate entities, but also to serve separate functions. I already had separate entity emails for personal, blog, fireresumes.com, and real estate, but I recently created one more to be used as a read-only email address. As the name suggests, any email that comes to this email address is an email that is for reading only, and I never really need to "get through" that inbox. I have mentioned previously my critical views on the constant distractions of email, even to the point where I wrote about why I would not subscribe to my own blog. That has since changed. I now use my read-only email address to subscribe to any and every newsletter and blog that I like to read, without having to worry about them cluttering precious inbox real estate. I will not share the name of that email address because even if you were to email me there, I would not respond (you can always reach me on my blog email linked above and I will be sure to respond). In fact, I do not expect I will ever intentionally send a single email from this new email address. It is strictly for receiving and collecting my favorite newsletters and generally any of the things that I like to read or stay updated on that are made available to be served over email. These emails will never again be a distraction, but I will always know where they are waiting to be read at my leisure. That is the way that read-only emails should be.
