Working Tools 45. Three Months with Hey

I got on the waiting list in February, and then got a code in June.

I was in! E-mail reinvented. Would I get stuart@hey.com? In a word, no. Either there’s someone at Basecamp called Stuart, or somebody beat me to it. I got stuart.lennon@hey.com, which is good enough, I guess.

Custom domains are not yet supported, although they will be soon. So - for three months, people emailing me at my custom domain, have been getting responses from Hey.com.

So - what do I think?

On my iPhone - I love it. As I have routed mail to the Imbox, or to the Feed or to the Paper trail, my mobile experience is auto-triaged. Generally, I ignore everything but the Imbox. That’s great.

On my Mac, I hate it. Somehow, I have turned my email into a doom scroll. On a traditional client, something is in archive, because I decided to put it there. In Hey, everything has gone there. Quite possibly without me having seen it.

Now - on the phone, I can buy into letting things go. But, my Mac is home base. This is where I want to things to be in places, because I have been deliberate, and put them there. For me - Hey on the Mac creates anxiety. I want to see every mail and make a decision about it - and that runs counter to the thinking behind the service.

Basecamp have been working hard repairing bugs and making tweaks. I believe that custom domains are imminent. The ability to use my own domain would be a definite positive - but it would not resolve my central issue - that I cannot convince myself to “let go” - specifically on the Mac.

Hey is a mail service. It’s all or nothing. I can’t use it as a client on one device and not on another.

As I type, I have reversed the forwards. Hey now forwards to my custom domain. So now, people who mail me at Hey, get responses from stuartlennon.com. I will keep a close eye on developments, but for now, Hey doesn’t work for me.

On Mac, I’m back to Apple Mail. As well as backing away from Hey, I am no longer splitting my email accounts across different applications. If I’m checking mail on the Mac - I want all the mail. It makes sense to have them all in one place. iPhone - I’m not sure how I’ll deal with that yet.

My recent brush with the law has made me rethink my task management / reminders systems. My analogue-digital hybrid system is loose. That’s a function of me - not of the tools. If I don’t migrate deadlines properly, then whatever the system is, won’t matter. As a generalisation, shifting things about, is easier in the digital world than the analogue one. Less crossing out and rewriting. In the past - I have stayed on top of things, largely in my head. Not paying the road tax would indicate that I’m not on top of things anymore.

The one tool that gets a lot of coverage, that I have never really given a chance, is Omnifocus. That’s now changing. I daresay, I’ll write about that more.

Will I return to Hey? I’m not sure. I will keep watching it for sure.