If you are still using the same email address for everything, it’s time to diversify. Don’t make the mistake I made for too long, clogging up one inbox with absolute nonsense unrelated to the things you actually want to receive and read. You likely already have separate emails for your job, school, and personal life, and many of us also have a designated “spam” email to enter into pop-up boxes in a hurry—but you might even benefit from a couple more. Here are the email addresses I advise setting up.
You need an email for logging into apps
I have a special email address just for my streaming services and random apps, so when Peacock or Hulu mysteriously log out on my TV, I can just reset the passwords using the special email address without junking up my real one.
This is great because apps and services simply love to send you emails about deals, specials, or reminders to log in, and while you could waste a bunch of time unsubscribing from them, you could also just banish them to a Gmail account you only open occasionally for that fresh log-in email, leaving the rest of the junk to rot. I’m also just hesitant to unsubscribe from emails that come from a service I sometimes do need emails from, which is the case with streamers and apps, as most of my two-factor authentication goes down in my email inbox. Separating these just makes sense.
You need an email for newsletters
In case you haven’t noticed, all your favorite news sites and even individual writers are gung-ho about newsletters. It’s great to get the information you want in your inbox, but less great when it interferes with you seeing the messages you actually need to get more important daily tasks done.
Creating a separate email inbox just for newsletters gives you a sort of curated Apple News-like experience. When you want to read the news or the musings of some great intellectual, open that inbox and scroll. When you want to tackle actual correspondence, you can just click away.
You need an email for your side hustles
This is where I fall short: I don’t actually have this, at least not in a consistent way. I use my real email for all my little adventures and money-making projects, which has become my downfall. When I used to freelance a lot, my email got added to some kind of freelancer database and now my personal inbox is absolutely brimming with PR pitches I never open or read. These come in so often that real correspondence from family members or people I am trying to work with gets lost.
If you’re smart (unlike me), you’ll set up an email address that is just for your gigging, whatever it entails. Whether you’re trying to be an influencer, a freelancer, a photographer, or a volunteer, anything that’s sort-of serious but not actually your job should end up in one place.
What do you think so far?
Do this early on when you start a project, too. I’d love to set up separate email addresses for my resale business, my fitness class teaching, and my copywriting and freelancing, but getting all my contacts in those spheres to start emailing the new address instead of the old one would cause headaches. Setting it up early precludes that, but also helps you shift into a different headspace when you’re corresponding with someone like a potential client. I do feel more assertive when I’m talking to someone as “Lindsey Ellefson, MPH” or “Lindsey Ellefson, award-winning journalist” instead of just “Lindsey Ellefson.” Setting up something like [your name][your title]@gmail.com can help you step into that more self-assured mindset.
Some multi-email tips
Try to designate your app-only email for free trials, too. When a trial ends, a company will stop at nothing to remind you that you can still sign up and give them money. Do not let these endless emails bother you or waste your time. Day pass at a gym? App-only email address. Free trial of a PDF editor or resume builder? App-only email address. Need to log into a public wifi that demands an email address for some unholy reason? You already know. Just make sure that for this one, you toggle off notifications, so your phone’s home screen doesn’t become overwhelmed with garbage.
I recommend using Gmail for all of this, too, because the Gmail app makes it so easy to switch between different accounts right on your phone. That way, you can even assign the addresses to different Chrome profiles on your computer, which has been a lifesaver for me as I toggle between different parts of my life. The only downside to going Gmail-only is that it’s hard, at first glance, to see which address is receiving a message when you get an alert on your phone’s lock screen. It shouldn’t be a major issue, though, because for a lot of these, like the one for streamers, you should toggle push notifications off entirely.
