Day 6: Deferring a message for later

Some messages don't need attention today, but urgently require it in the future.

Travel documents. Emails that need a follow up in a week. Bills due in 15 days. Messages where you're awaiting a reply. Stuff you'll get to next week. An email with a phone number from someone you're meeting for coffee next Tuesday.

Yesterday, we asked you 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 messages like the ones above? Some messages require action or your attention later. Research from Carnegie Mellon University estimates that a whopping 37% of all email falls into this category.

For example, if you're flying to Paris next month (lucky you!), 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; if you include all of these, you'll be right back up to 100+ messages in no time flat. And you'll likely 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 a message, 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. 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. When you Boomerang a message, it is archived for now (more precisely, moved to the Boomerang folder/label) and automatically returned to the top of your inbox at the time you need it. The Gmail version also supports returning messages only if you don't get a response. If you choose the calendar/folders approach, you'll need to replicate much of that functionality manually; a somewhat tedious but 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.

To do: Estimated Time: 15 min

Gmail users:

Download and install the Boomerang for Gmail plugin for Chrome, Firefox, or Safari
Watch the Boomerang for Gmail demo video:
Pick a message that isn't very important, and Boomerang it for One Hour to see how Boomerang works
Go through (the first 100 messages in) your inbox and Boomerang any messages that require action, attention, or follow up in the future
When 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

Outlook users:

Download and install the Boomerang for Outlook plugin
Watch the Boomerang for Outlook demo video
Boomerang an unimportant message for an hour from now to see how it works
Go through (the first 100 messages in) your inbox and Boomerang any messages that require action, attention, or follow up in the future

Other mail client users who prefer to create a folder structure to defer messages

Choose a folder structure that works for you.
1. David Allen recommends a system of 43.
  1. One folder per day labeled Day 1, Day 2, Day 31, one for each day of the month
  2. One folder for each month, labeled January, February, etc.
2. We recommend a more naturally-spaced set of folders
  1. One for each day of the week, labeled Monday, Tuesday, etc.
  2. One for two weeks out
  3. One for next month
  4. One for further out than that
For each message in (the first 100 messages of) your Inbox that needs attention later, drag it to the appropriate folder. For example, if today is Monday, January 16th
1. If a message needs attention on Wednesday the 18th, drag it to either the Day 18 folder or the Wednesday folder
2. If a message needs attention on Feb 23rd, drag it to either the February folder or the Next Month folder.
Every day, check the folder that corresponds to that day in your tickler system; on Jan. 16th, check the Day 16 or Monday folder and clear everything out of it.
Every first of the month, check that month's folder system, and clear everything out of it.
For more information about creating a "tickler folder system" check out this article: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/back-to-basics-the-tickler-file.html

Other mail client users who prefer a calendar-based solution

For each message in (the first 100 messages of) your Inbox that needs attention later, create a 0-minute calendar appointment when you need to take action on it.
Copy a link to the message into your calendar. If in Gmail, copy the URL. If in Outlook or Mac Mail, drag the message to your calendar. In Thunderbird, copy the subject so you can find it later.
Drag the message to your Archive folder.

Share today's info:

Final Thoughts

We defer action on a whopping 37% of emails. Do so more effectively.	Tweet
The best way to defer an email is to get it out of your inbox & get a reminder later.	Tweet
You can defer a message using 43 folders, calendar, or a reminder service like Boomerang.	Tweet

The last couple days have focused on how to use Archive as the primary action for managing our email. Today, we learned how to handle the roughly one third of our email that needs attention later. Tomorrow, we'll talk about the delete button - when to use it, and why you should.

In the interest of transparency, we'd like to explicitly make it clear that we are also the people that make Boomerang. We're mentioning it here because it works better than anything else we've found for solving this problem. All of us find it indispensable. While we do benefit from selling subscriptions to the service, we will not use any revenue from ReviveYourInbox sources to torture small animals, prop up dictatorships, or sow chaos across the world, we promise. FYI: two more days from the course mention our products, the rest do not.