henry@bonnycastle.us

On #1, don’t just shoot a reply email that you will work on it, but first flag/star it (depending on your email application) and then actually schedule something in your calendar to work on it. For example, I create an appointment (with myself) to block an appropriate time in my schedule to work on the to-do; and to make it easy on myself, I attach the email in the calendar appointment so I don’t have to hunt for it when the schedule comes. Oh yeah, if it turns out to be not urgent and I have more urgent thing, I may reschedule the appointment with myself to work on it later.

On #2, similar to above and assuming you and the sender are on the same / compatible calendaring system, schedule the appointment directly by looking up the free schedule of the sender. While at it, if you need another expert / decision maker involved, add the person to the meeting invite.

The benefits of this approach are: (a) you get it out of your way but you are not going to forget it, and (b) you actually will have the time to do it.

Cheers

Great question. For the “add to to-do list,” I think I understand what you’re saying. I write each email out on the to-do list, and make sure it’s marked as “read” within the email (again, don’t leave anything unread). But, if there are some similar items, feel free to batch it.

For instance, in my email inbox, this comment came in, as well as a couple other comments. Within my to-do planner, I wrote, “Answer Comments.”

I didn’t write out every single commentors name; I used a healthy batching process

There’s usually two actions (not to get too confusing) with this process that are optional.

1) If it’s going to take me a long time to do, I don’t want to leave the person hanging. Thus, I’ll shoot a quick email like “Thanks, [name]. I’ll put it on my to-do list and look into it later.”

2) If it’s an insanely long email (one or more paragraphs), and it’s worth it, set up a call. “Hey [Name] — Are you free’d up for a call tomorrow? If so, shoot me three available times.”

Hope that helped a little. Again, it’s not a stringent process. It’s very organic. You’ll develop a style, system and way to adequately sift through these.

Last, if you have too many projects going on, don’t hesitate to delegate, or just say no to things coming in.

In other words, in processing through the flow chart, I have no difficulty with the “delete,” or even the “do it now” emails, but the “add to to-do list” emails still throw me.