revive your inbox: defer messages that require attention in the future

Deferring Email for Later

Some messages don’t need attention today, but urgently require it in the

future

Such As:

• Emails that need a follow-up in a week

• An email with directions to a coffee shop for next Tuesday

• Travel document email

• e-Bills due in 15 days

• Email that you’re awaiting reply on

• Email you just want to deal with next week

• If you’ve checked out our presentation on the importance of archive

• You know to use Archive as your primary email management tool

• When an email no longer requires attention, Archiving lets you get it out of your Inbox and out of your mind, but keeps it available in case you need it someday

• But what about email like the ones above, that require action or your attention later.

• After all, research from Carnegie Mellon University estimates that a whopping 37% of all email falls into this category.

• For example, if you’re flying to Vegas next month, you’ll want your airline ticket in your inbox the day you fly, but you don’t need to do anything with it until then.

• One option is to leave the message in your inbox until that time.

• But remember, you’re only supposed to leave messages in your inbox that are unread or require action today.

• Because if you include all of these, your inbox will be back up to 100+ message in no time.

• And you might forget to check back on it if it gets buried by incoming messages.

• Today, we are going to introduce an extremely powerful concept that solves this problem.

• It’s known as Deferring and it’s been popularized by David Allen as part of the Getting Things Done workflow.

• When you defer email, you move it out of your inbox but set up a technological solution to bring the message back to your attention at a later date.

• If you use Outlook or Gmail, we recommend Boomerang for Email reminders

• When you Boomerang a message, it is archived temporarily

• and automatically returned to the top of your inbox at the time you need it.

• It works like a Boomerang

• If you use another mail client, the best methods are to add the email to your calendar or to create a folder structure that supports deferring messages.

• If you choose the calendar/ folders approach, you’ll need to replicate much of the functionality manually; a somewhat tedious by not overwhelming challenge

• If you choose the calendar/ folders approach, you’ll need to replicate much of the functionality manually; a somewhat tedious by not overwhelming challenge

• So for all emails that require action, attention, or follow up in the future, defer them to get them out of your inbox now and remind you later. Here’s how:

1. Download and install the Boomerang for Gmail or Outlook plug-in

2. Pick a message that isn’t very important, and Boomerang it for one hour to see how Boomerang works

3. Go through the first 100 messages in your inbox and Boomerang and messages that require action, attention, or follow up in the future

4. When you’re writing a message today, check the box (under the subject line) to Boomerang the message back to your attention if you don’t get a response.

Other Mail Client users who prefer to create a folder structure to defer

messages• Click here for detailed instructions

In Conclusion

1. We defer action on a whopping 37% of email. Do so more effectively.

2. The best way to defer an email is to get it out of your inbox and get a reminder later.

3. You can defer a message using a folder system, a calendar system, or a reminder service like Boomerang

Click to download Boomerang for Gmail

http://www.reviveyourinbox.com/?utm_source=slideshare_organizeyourinbox&utm_medium=slideshare&utm_content=CTA+&utm_campaign=reviveyourinbox

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