Get Everything Done

I am really enjoying the renewed vigour of Mark's thinking and discussion on the site. It's like old times. Everyday quite a bit of e-mail lands in my various in-boxes. I do a reasonable job of keeping up. And the secret (well not very) tool is: http://www.followupthen.com . I use this for 3 things:

- if an e-mail arrives and I can't deal with it today (eg too busy, not sure its worth bothering with or I don't have some information) then I forward the e-mail to say a week's time and it reappears then
- if I forward it on (typically to ask someone to do something to enable me to reply) then I bcc (blind copy) in followupthen for say 3 days, so I can follow up
- if I want to remember to do something in the future I send an e-mail off to it and then it appears in my in-box when requested in the future

I like it because it's nice and easy. And suddenly need to clutter up any lists with minor stuff to remember. Everyday I get about 10 e-mail reminders most of which I find I've already dealt with so I can just delete. I no longer worry small stuff will fall through the cracks. It works a treat with colleagues who aren't very good at doing things quickly. I use my system to remind me to nag them a few times (by e-mail or in person) and they hey presto they do the stuff.

As a bonus you can login and see what reminders you have set up. This is useful if the anxiety level on forgetting things rises. Also useful for reminding me what I've got on the go when talking to my boss at our catch ups.

I think this could be a useful part of any system. Sure there are other services that do the same. I think I pay a bit for this. But sadly insufficiently organised to remember how much.

Inbox by Google - http://inbox.google.com/ - has a similar "snooze" feature and is free.

Of course, both these solutions mean you have to route your mail through a third party.

Spark - http://sparkmailapp.com/ - is an email client that brings this feature to any mail server of your choosing, but it is unfortunately iPhone/iPad only.

Mailbox - http://www.mailboxapp.com/ - was available for desktop and mobile and the first app with this feature, but unfortunately Dropbox acquired it and shut it down.

I think newer versions of Outlook have that feature as well. I'm not aware of any other applications that do.

If you use the Outlook desktop client, you can use filters and due dates to create a "snooze" feature. Instructions: http://kevinguyer.squarespace.com/blog/2013/3/11/outlook-fu-how-to-snooze-email-in-your-inbox.html

I think Mark's last comment is really important. There's such a big difference between putting a task off until later and scheduling it to be done for a (specific) later date. I think this has caused some confusion recently as people think you do *everything* on the day you get it.

I used Mailbox until it but the dust and now find Inbox useful for this sort of thing.