The blog

For you who prefer listening to reading, this post is also available as an episode of the ""Done!"" podcast:

A flow for every email

The process involves me read­ing it and then either doing what the mes­sage implies straight away (reply­ing, for exam­ple) or cre­at­ing a to-do task about what I need to do some oth­er time and final­ly fil­ing it away or delet­ing it. (Archiv­ing and delet­ing main­ly con­cerns emails and not so much chat messages.)

Unread but actu­al­ly read becomes a to-do task

A key step in the process is that I cre­ate a to-do task if the incom­ing mes­sage means I have to do some­thing that I do not want to do or have time to do immediately.

Some peo­ple I meet are reluc­tant to do this. Why spend time cre­at­ing to-do tasks when it is so easy to mark the email you just read as unread again so that you can come back to it later?

Here’s why

Well, of course, you want to pri­or­i­tize accu­rate­ly and get the right things done at the right time. At every moment you want to choose the right task to work on. With this approach, you want to be able to see every­thing you have to do in one place, in one list, rather than look­ing through sev­er­al places and chan­nels to com­pare the pri­or­i­ty of the tasks with each oth­er. That is why you have a to-do list where every­thing you do not do imme­di­ate­ly is gath­ered — no mat­ter how the tasks come to you; as ideas, from col­leagues, from a phone call, from a meet­ing, from a con­ver­sa­tion, or some oth­er way.

If you mark emails and mes­sages as unread for you to return to, you cre­ate an addi­tion­al implic­it list (com­prised of the unread mes­sages). Since it is in the email- and mes­sage streams that ​“things hap­pen” as new things come in, that will be the place you con­sult for what to do more than the actu­al to-do list (which remains unchanged when you do not do some­thing with it your­self). The risk is there­fore high that you will ​“for­get about” or at least neglect the to-do list and instead pri­mar­i­ly select tasks from the emails and messages.

But, just because some­thing comes in as an email or mes­sage, it does not mean it should be pri­or­i­tized. There may be some­thing on the to-do list that has even high­er pri­or­i­ty right now, even if it was added sev­er­al weeks ago. You pri­or­i­tize wrong­ly, the tasks on the to-do list get delayed, the list itself becomes a guilty-con­science list, you feel that you no longer have a com­pre­hen­sive overview of every­thing, and life just feels messier.

It should not have to be this way.

Do this

If the sit­u­a­tion (and con­se­quences) of not cre­at­ing tasks from emails and mes­sages that you are sup­posed to do some­thing with but not right away, sound famil­iar, do the following:

1. Look through your emails and the mes­sage feeds you are cur­rent­ly most fre­quent­ly active in. It could be Teams, a com­ment fea­ture in the col­lab­o­ra­tion tool you use, social media, or some oth­er kind of chat plat­form. Do you have any emails or mes­sages there that you have read and marked as unread for you to come back to?
2. If so, cre­ate con­crete and detailed to-do tasks from them instead.
3. Make a habit of doing this in the future. 
    

A com­plete list is more convenient

If you cre­ate to-dos from emails and mes­sages that you would oth­er­wise mark as unread again, you will have a to-do list that is more com­plete than oth­er­wise. When you pri­or­i­tize from it, you will pri­or­i­tize more accu­rate­ly, because you are pri­or­i­tiz­ing amongst every­thing you have to do — not just among what you have received through a par­tic­u­lar chan­nel. You will be able to ​“get through the inbox” faster since you can tuck away the emails you have received before you have done every­thing they entail. 

You no longer have to keep track of both the email, the oth­er inbox­es, and the to-do list, but only the to-do list. If you look there, you can rest assured you are not miss­ing any­thing some­place else.

What’s your solution?

How have you man­aged to keep your to-do list com­plete — despite new things com­ing in through many dif­fer­ent chan­nels? Please write to me and share!

(Speak­ing of how the inbox can some­times feel over­flow­ing. Read more about out how you can get rid of emails and mes­sages you do not want to spend time on!)