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. It's known as Deferring, and it's been popularized by David Allen as part of the Getting Things Done workflow. Today we are going to introduce an extremely powerful concept that solves this problem. And you'll likely forget to check back on it if it gets buried by incoming messages. 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. One option is to leave the message in your inbox until that time. Research from Carnegie Mellon University estimates that a whopping 37% of all email falls into this category.įor 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. But what about messages like the ones above? Some messages require action or your attention later. 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. Yesterday, we asked you to use Archive as your primary email management tool. An email with a phone number from someone you're meeting for coffee next Tuesday. Want to learn more about Boomerang? Check out these Boomerang Videos on YouTube.Travel documents. If you notice that you are constantly distracted by new message notifications on your phone or computer, I highly recommend you try pausing your inbox and muting your phone for 30-60 minutes a day to catch up on your email. The power here is that you are more focused because more emails aren’t piling into your inbox while you are replying to other messages. Clicking the Pause Email button allows you to pause emails for a period of time… letting you get caught up on your inbox. We’re all tied a little too closely to our email inbox. This is a simple feature, but so powerful. And I do check back with the people I’ve sent emails to with no response. There’s a handy “dismiss nudge” button in the subject of the email if you don’t need to follow up… but often, I love the reminder. Reminders When an Email has Gone Staleīoomerang will watch the emails that you’ve sent… if there hasn’t been a response in a couple of days, it will bring the email to the top of your inbox as a reminder to follow up. I also schedule sales follow up emails and Bcc myself for a built-in “nudge” when it’s time to focus on a prospect for follow up. I prefer my emails not get lost in the shuffle, so for important emails, I’ll schedule them to be sent at a better time, like during normal business hours. So I explained in my email that I had scheduled the email to be delivered on her birthday to make sure she knew I was thinking about her!Īnother situation is when I want to send a client a message, but it happens to be 11pm. I knew getting an email from me while I was gone would surprise her, because she knew I wasn’t going to have internet or phone access. There are lots of different situations when I want to send an email at a later date.Ī simple situation that happened recently was scheduling a happy birthday email to my mom because I was going to be out of town. I use all three of these features on a regular basis, and they definitely help me manage my email more efficiently. (It does more than three things, but these three are my favorite.)ġ) Schedule Emails to be sent at a later date/timeĢ) Get reminders when an email you’ve sent hasn’t been responded to in a while ( Boomerang for Gmail) ( Boomerang for Outlook) Boomerang for Gmail and Outlookīoomerang is a plugin for Gmail and Outlook that does three things really well. So this week, I wanted to talk about Boomerang. If I have some suggestions on how to use that tech more efficiently, I will do a future blog post and mention you as a thank you for the idea… I would love to know if there is something you spend a lot of time on (with tech). (If you’ve read my LinkedIn profile, you might know that my love for computers started with an Apple IIe in 4th grade…) The reason for this is that I have a computer engineering degree and I’ve been using and programming computers for much of my adult life. I get a LOT of questions on how to use technology more effectively. In Business Recommendations, Information Technology / Boomerang for Gmail and Outlook: Managing your Email More Efficiently
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