As I process my email inbox, then, I decide quickly which of these to do for each email, in order of preference: If I prefer, I can also forward the email to a Todoist project and it will show up as an action in that project.

If it takes longer, then I forward it to Todoist, and fortunately there exists a nice plugin for Mailplane that lets me add a task to Todoist directly.

If I can answer it in two minutes, then I answer it as soon as I’ve sorted all the incoming mail. I always prefer to delete the message immediately or file it for future reference (notices, bills that I automatically pay, and so on), but when I have to answer the message, I apply the Two-Minute Rule. When I process my email inbox, I want to quickly assess which emails to delete immediately, file for future reference, answer someday, answer soon, or answer now. Suffice it to say that I don’t want to track significant work in email I want to see it in Todoist or, in some cases, directly on my calendar. Yes, perhaps I should not be so weak-minded, but managing one’s work well involves creating systems to tolerate one’s weakness, rather than work against them.

When I open email to look for work to do, I become easily distracted by the new email to process, so I end up doing that instead.

I really hate looking in multiple places to remind myself what I should be doing next.

I sometimes don’t open email for several weeks.I know that some of you use email to manage your tasks, and that doesn’t work for me, for a few reasons. I strongly prefer to track work in one place, and I’ve chosen Todoist for that. You might call them “projects” or “next actions” or “to do”s, but I try to call it simply “work”, if for no other reason than to make it easier to talk about.

Todoist gmail