Saw a blog post today on why not to use your inbox as a to-do list:
http://zenhabits.net/2009/07/why-your-email-inbox-is-not-a-good-to-do-list/

All valid points, but most not technically difficult to implement. I've definitely realized these same frustrations with email. So I thought why not make an email cllient based on to-do lists?

basic features:
-a reorderable inbox
-quick splitting of messages into multiple messages (I think there'd be split icons at linebreaks to make this easier)
-creating new items/messages which is basically like sending yourself an email (I do this all the time)
-you can set messages to have arbitrary timestamps. so if you don't want to worry about a task for a week, you set it, and it shows up in your main view a week later. (you can still browse upcoming messages/tasks, but they won't get in your way)
-Editing of subject and body. you can quickly bold important sections or make notes
-merging and duplication of messages
-original messages would be saved, of course, for archival purposes

two questions:
1. Do you have this habit of using your inbox as a to-do list? Do you think it is inherently problematic?
2. Is there something like this out there?
I realize that there are a ton of simple to-do list apps, but to my knowledge no email clients like this.

I'm not dumb enough to ask you if you would actually use this.

7/2/2009 7:58:51 PM

.

[Edited on July 2, 2009 at 8:15 PM. Reason : .]

7/2/2009 8:15:29 PM

Noen: use latest MS product

7/2/2009 8:15:29 PM

my work setup is still stuck in the stone age, so I wouldn't know: IE6 and outlook 2004

and I was reading some FAQ on our publicly facing site and it's mentioning that IE, Netscape Navigator, and Netscape Communicator (hi and welcome to 10 years ago) are the best browsers to use for the site. Oh and something about WebTV also.

7/2/2009 8:29:39 PM

yikes

7/2/2009 8:45:27 PM

Using technology to solve an issue with a business process / workplace culture issue generally isn't a good idea. People will hate the technology for forcing it to change the way they are used to doing things, even if the technology presents a better way of doing it.

Email isn't a good way to go about it. It's designed for a specific purpose, and this sounds like too much of a stretch for it. Ideally, you should look into smaller-scale "workflow" application that will automate your business processes, incorporating email as a communication mechanism in the process. As stupid as it sounds, having electronic signatures for documents and having documents automatically go from Person A to Person E for review and approval is one common example of this. This would also double as a "do-to" / task list, with notifications sent when tasks are due. Start this on a small pilot and then have others who are interested join in.

Unfortunately, I'm only familiar with the enterprise-scale apps that do this, not so much smaller scale ones. Suggestions from others?

[Edited on July 3, 2009 at 12:37 AM. Reason : .]

7/3/2009 12:35:11 AM

Outlook has both Notes and To-Do lists that are synced to the server (and therefore web-accessible) so using emails themselves seems kind of pointless. Of course this is only of consequence if you work for a company using Exchange, but its pretty popular.

Personally, I still prefer pen & paper for to-do lists and a bug tracking system, like Mantis, for my software development "to-do's"

7/3/2009 12:41:43 AM

i didn't do this intentionally, but my system over the years has evolved toward:

pen/paper for things to do this week
gmail starred items + gmail tasks for things to do in the next month
google doc for things to do in the next year or longer

[Edited on July 3, 2009 at 12:44 AM. Reason : .]

7/3/2009 12:42:57 AM

Quote :

"Using technology to solve an issue with a business process / workplace culture issue generally isn't a good idea. People will hate the technology for forcing it to change the way they are used to doing things, even if the technology presents a better way of doing it."

Just to be clear, that's the opposite of what I'm suggesting. This app would support a "bad habit" that people already have (using email in that way), not forcing them to adopt new ones.

And Perlith, I guess you assumed I meant at an enterprise level, but that's not really my interest.

Quote :

"Outlook has both Notes and To-Do lists that are synced to the server (and therefore web-accessible) so using emails themselves seems kind of pointless."

Sure. I've heard Gmail has a feature where you turn messages into tasks or something. But the idea I'm entertaining here doesn't have a separate to-do module or separate to-do app. It runs off the assumption that everything in your inbox requires either deleting, archiving, or additional work. Emails would be treated as to-do items from the start without additional effort.

If you guys don't have this habit, then it doesn't really matter. I'm not trying to show you a new way of doing things; this is more like making light cigarettes than a patch, ok? To give you an idea:
-I see an email that requires action
-I read it, but then mark it unread so it annoys me for a while
-hopefully I get to it before it falls off page 1
-sometimes I'll make it starred like qntmfred

The biggest problems I run into are not being able to reorder and not being able to set things away for later attention.

[Edited on July 3, 2009 at 7:02 AM. Reason : .]

7/3/2009 6:57:53 AM

i had no idea people actually used email like this until somsone at work's unread marks got screwed up and they had no idea what they had worked on and what needed to be done. Its seriously one of the dumbest things i've ever seen. The only valuable use of email is for messages between companies and in some cases internal broadcast messages where you dont have centralized means of communications (intranet postings, internal message boards, etc...).

Learn to use to dos as they're a much nicer way to track that stuff. Or better yet get an issue tracker/project management application that integrates with your to dos. This way you can manage everyone's tasks from one location and they still show up in their mail client.

7/3/2009 10:12:01 AM

First off, there are probably 1000 stories on this sort of topic on LifeHacker so you might want to spend some time there.
Fore example:
http://lifehacker.com/5296937/treat-your-inbox-as-a-to+do-list

If Outlook is possible, then spend some time learning rules/filters, categories, priority levels, and flagging (not to mention combining with Outlooks built-in notes and/or to-do's). One thing Outlook has that you said you want is right-click a message and "Follow Up: Today/Tomorrow/Next Week/Custom". You can also right-click: Categorize (like gmail labels), right-click: Move to folder, use auto-filtering rules for decluttering, and utilize the priorities and "mark as complete" for the true to-do messages. This is probably the most powerful method but the least accessible to everyone since it is largely desktop-oriented and the portability is limited unless you have Exchange.
http://adamisageek.tumblr.com/post/26668778/how-outlook-keeps-me-organized

You don't want add-ons or extra products so useful integration, like Remember The Milk in Gmail, is out, correct?
http://unclutterer.com/2008/04/09/a-simple-way-to-simplify-email-from-stowe-boyd/

It sounds like you are using a variation of the "Trusted Trio" and want what RTM integration (from above) would bring without the use of the add-on, correct?
http://lifehacker.com/182318/empty-your-inbox-with-the-trusted-trio
http://lifehacker.com/347335/empty-your-inbox-with-gmail-and-the-trusted-trio

I echo Shaggy's sentiments about the dangers of email use for to-do's. Its far to easy to screw up a system that is relying on unread states and timestamps that I've had wiped or reset by both server hiccups and my own idiocy. I have since largely abandoned inbox as to-do (except for strictly communication to-do's that Outlook/Exchange has natural support for). Its just easier to keep true to-do lists in their own realm: pen & paper for general life to-do's (so I never lose access), synched text files for long term goals, and specific solutions like Mantis for bug/feature tracking.

7/3/2009 2:06:52 PM

http://www.moleskines.com/moleskine-cahier-journals.html
+ scrap paper cut into fourths

at one point i taped off sections of my desk and kept notes and papers in the sections but now i share an office space and have a smaller desk. i use outlook to-do lists mostly with setting up reminders to follow up in regards to emails or calls.

i too tried to find a technological solution to keeping organized like you want but after wasting so much time with it i switched to the tried and true pen and paper

7/3/2009 6:21:40 PM

Honest to god this is how I use Outlook + Exchange everyday.

I live and die by my email. On an average day I get 100-150 emails that I actually need to read, and of those usually 20-30 that either require a response or work. My inbox usually hovers between 150-800 emails, every month or two I spend a few days getting it back down to a single page worth. And that's with about 30 filters in place

I never used Outlook (Thunderbird holler!) before, but after getting someone to show me rules/filters and figuring out how the To-Do lists work, it keeps me sane.

If I get an email I need to take action on, just click the to-do flag, it adds it as a "task". Then I plop in a due date, and any notes to myself about it. If I need to "split" it, just make a few more To-Do's manually and drag and drop the original to it. It lets me prioritize, categorize, and customize the stuff, while providing a super fast way to get back to the contents and context of the task. I also have email triggers setup for when Bugs are assigned to me, so I know when I get new stuff incoming from our TFS server.

The best part about it, is that every 6 months, when it comes review time, i can just print out the completed tasks list, and it shows the hundred and hundreds of things I did, without me having to recall all of it manually.

I also use the digital sticky notes in Win7 for more "general" stuff that isn't really a task, and or isn't really required for me to do, as well as for much longer term theme's for stuff I'm working on.

[Edited on July 4, 2009 at 2:55 PM. Reason : ,]

7/4/2009 2:50:53 PM

Quote :

"The best part about it, is that every 6 months, when it comes review time, i can just print out the completed tasks list, and it shows the hundred and hundreds of things I did, without me having to recall all of it manually."

that's really smart. i've always liked when todo lists (paper or digital) had a "completed" view, to remind me of all the stuff i've done.

7/4/2009 3:18:47 PM

Don't give your email an IRQ.

I tend to ignore my inbox for most of the day, checking it only once an hour or so. I turn off the email alert, because it tends to interrupt my train of thought. If it's important, and demands a response sooner, people should either call or stop by my office.

7/4/2009 7:22:13 PM

not true at all.

7/4/2009 7:49:30 PM

Yeah I agree. That only works if you are generally in a single-task work environment.

If I ignored my email for a day, I would have 10 people calling me constantly and people standing in line at the door. Hell, if I take a long lunch, I generally have at least two people calling

7/5/2009 7:07:58 PM

I'm generally involved in 2 to 4 projects at any given time during the year; but during any given hour of the day I'm only actively working on one of them. I still respond to emails, however the turnaround time for emails would average half an hour, rather than instantaneous. A half an hour response time over non-critical issues is considered good by people who don't think the sky is falling everyday. If it's a critical issue, or a quick 30 second question, they should be sending a phone call anyway.

Quote :

"Repetitive tasks are usually not high-priority ones, but they still need to be done. The fact that they need to be done doesn’t mean they need to be done the moment they have your attention. Let them accumulate, handling them at optimally infrequent intervals, between which you spend the bulk of your time focusing on higher-impact tasks. http://tools-for-thought.com/2008/04/24/a-pattern-language-for-productivity-pattern-17-batching/"

Quote :

"The corollary to not checking your e-mail all the time is that you must also make sure the e-mail program doesn't keep checking your e-mail for you. Again, the interruptions only serve to distract and break your focus. Unfortunately, most programs enable these notifications by default, and that's because, in general, people like programs that behave as if they are doing something cool. Additionally, getting a new e-mail, for many folks, is the equivalent of a little digital self-validation. It says, "Hey, someone out there might have liked me enough to e-mail me today." http://lifehacker.com/172610/"

Put yourself on the other end... It's similar to using a cell phone to send a text vs. send a phone call. If you're driving around lost, trying to find someone's house, you should stop and call them and ask them where they live. Once asked, you know they received your question, and they know you're on the other line waiting for an answer. You don't stop and send them a text message; there's no ACK that they got your message, and you could be sitting there for hours wondering if they got your text.

7/5/2009 8:23:16 PM

i agree. i know for myself, distractions absolutely KILL my productivity. it takes like 10 minutes to get back into the groove. the more i can minimize interruptions, the better

7/5/2009 9:05:58 PM

^ and ^^ that's why I get my work done after 5pm, it's when the flood stops. You guys are in the opposite boat though. The workstyle of a manager (and many designers in this company) is the mega-multitasker.

7/6/2009 3:01:39 AM

^oh yeah, forgot you were a manager yeah, have fun with your blackberry bro.

7/6/2009 4:34:29 AM

^I'm a designer, but unfortunately I managing my own workload is a big part of my job. Being a scarce resource tends to do that

No blackberry, I do rely very very heavily on my iPhone and Exchange though.

7/6/2009 7:43:14 AM