It is quite common to see working professionals today putting in a lot of hard working hours every month at work. Many of us even do multiple jobs, or handle different responsibilities at the same time. This could be for a variety of reasons like simply making a living, supporting our families, buying a house, paying off your student loan, investing for a better future, etc. We put so much time and effort into our work that we forget to even think about taking a vacation.
Let’s say you’ve got an incredibly exciting vacation coming up in the next few days and you’re pumped about heading to your dream destination with your spouse and kids. You’ve been planning this vacation for several months now, and you’ve put in a lot of research and time into organizing everything for the trip. Your kids have been equally excited, and they’ve been looking forward to this 10-day getaway where you can spend quality time with your entire family.
However, it’s nearly impossible for you to stay away from emails, even when you’re on vacation. No matter how much your spouse or kids demand it, there’s just no way you can avoid checking your inbox. There are some kind of emails that are high-priority and need to be responded in a timely manner, and you just cannot ignore them. Some examples of high-priority emails include:
- Urgent emails from your boss or client
- Billing issues related to your hosting infrastructure provider
- Emergency emails from family and friends
- Downtime notifications from your server
- Security/Breach notifications from your server
- Fraud Transaction notifications
There are several other cases where it’s imperative to act immediately.
Unfortunately, email has become such a fundamental method of communication today that all these critical emails are often lost in a sea of other junk and less important emails like newsletters, social media notifications, event invites, etc. Are you wasting your time searching the web for how to block emails on iPhone?
Have you wondered how you can go on a vacation and enjoy your time, but still not miss important emails? How do you have a great time with your family on your trip, but still attending to important emails that deserve your attention?
With Spark, achieving this work-life balance is really easy.
1. Smart Inbox
One of the core features of Spark, and also one of its most revered features, is the Smart Inbox. With Smart Inbox, Spark automagically categorizes the incoming email in your inbox and sorts it into three main categories Personal, Notifications, and Newsletters. Each of these is nearly labeled in the app, so you can attend to only those emails that you deem important.
When you first setup your email account in Spark, Smart Inbox is automatically configured and Spark gets to work organizing your emails for you. All future email that arrives in your Spark inbox is sorted into the relevant section. When you read an email, it automatically goes into the ‘Seen’ section of the Smart Inbox.
What’s more, Spark even gives you the power to customize your Smart Inbox, so your email inbox can work exactly how you want.
With this feature, you can retain your sanity on your vacation and only attend to the important emails while ignoring the unimportant junk in Newsletters and Notifications. Now, you no longer have to waste time finding solutions on how to stop spam emails on your iPhone.
2. Smart Notifications
One of the major annoyances with any email app is the bombardment of notifications whenever you receive an email in your inbox. Spark saves you from this annoyance with its Smart Notifications feature.
Smart Notifications works in conjunction with the Smart Inbox so that you are only notified about the important emails you receive. You can configure Spark to only alert you if a Personal (or Important) email comes in, so you can attend to it and take action immediately while ignoring the rest of the emails that can wait till you’re back from vacation.
Now that we’ve learned about these two amazing features in Spark, let’s see how we can configure them such that Spark only alerts you about the important email. Don’t worry about how to block an email address, as these steps will be more than enough to retain your sanity when on vacation.
First, ensure that Smart Inbox is enabled on your iOS device. Go to Spark Settings → Personalization → Sidebar and tap on the + Add New option to enable Smart Inbox. You can tap and hold onto each row to rearrange their position in the sidebar. We recommend moving Smart Inbox to the top of the list here.
Next, go to Spark Settings → Mail Accounts → [your important email account] and ensure that the Notification Preferences are set to ‘Smart’ instead of ‘All’. For the best peace of mind, we recommend changing these preferences to ‘No Notifications’ for all other non-important accounts in your list.
There you go! You’ve now configured Spark to alert you about the important emails, so when you’re on vacation, you can enjoy your time with your family.
3. Snooze
Often when on a vacation, you’ll come across an email that you cannot act upon right away, but it is still important for you to take care of once you’re back. You might now have access to the resources required to respond to this email, such as presentation files or invoices, or you may want to just attend to it once you’re back in the comforts of your home or office.
Most of the time, people simply choose to leave the email in their Inbox so that they can work on it later. Unfortunately, this method not only clutters up your inbox unnecessarily, it also fails to work when you have too many emails in your high-volume inbox already and also doesn’t alert you again, when you want it to.
As a Spark user, you have the advantage of using the brilliant ‘Snooze’ feature of the app. With a single tap, you can “snooze” an email temporarily and have Spark alert you about it later. This works just like the Snooze button on your Alarm Clock — when you snooze something, it goes away temporarily, but still alerts you later when you want.
When you snooze an email in Spark, the app automatically moves it to a special folder. You can choose to snooze an email in Spark for a few hours, a few days, or even manually set a date in the future. It works like magic!
Then, when it’s time to alert you, Spark will notify you with an alert and move the email back to your Inbox. This way, you can take action on that email right away and not miss it again.
Get Spark for Free and have the best time on your vacation, without missing important emails. Of course, don’t forget to change the settings when you’re back, or your boss won’t be too pleased with you.
Preshit Deorukhkar 
