I was very happy to see a response to the prior post How to Use OmniFocus (A Guide for the Advanced User). 🙂
Today I wanted to focus on the major function of email as it relates to the Treading Water concept. There is a functionality of email already integrated with OmniFocus, but as I do not use Mac Mail, I thought of utilizing another method for Gmail.
The methodology works for other programs beyond e-mail so I would encourage you to consider it for alternative purposes as well.
Below are discussed in the following order:
- Hyperlinks and Links in Notes
- Initial setup of Email in Routine Maintenance
- Adding notes
- Use for Individual Emails
- Conversational Emails and Time Stamps
- Shortening the Distance between Thought and Action
Hyperlinks and Links in Notes
First, lets consider hyperlinking and their potential in emails. Gmail will be the example program as I use it myself. However, similar processes can likely be found with other e-mail clients.
As long as you have the ability with your mailing program to:
- link to a specific email
- link to a specific folder (e.g. inbox)
you should be able to utilize these same concepts.
In Gmail, both messages and folders are called upon by the URLs of the pages. Using these within the notes section of the OmniFocus tasks allows for ready email management.
Initial setup of Email in Routine Maintenance
As a routine, I like to check my email twice daily – once anytime after 6am and again after 2pm. I don’t necessarily check them at exactly these times, but that is when they show up on the treading water list.
The first folder in Project Mode is “Routine Maintenance.” Within that folder, there is a project titled “Daily”.
In the project “Daily” are two separate tasks (among other non-email related tasks):
- “Check e-mail 6am” with a start time of 6am today – repeated daily. Context is “e-mail”.
- “Check e-mail 2pm” with a start time of 2pm today – repeated daily. Context is “e-mail”.
These tasks are both selected and the inspector is opened (Shift-Cmd-i). The repeat section is checked and assigned to every 1 day, with “Assigned Date” selected.
*Update: Since writing this post originally and reviewing now, I’ve changed this practice slightly: The morning e-mail is now checked at 10am instead. This makes a significant difference in terms of having a more clear mind for creative tasks first thing in the morning.
Adding Notes
Added to the notes of these tasks (key command: cmd-‘) is the hyperlink: http://mail.google.com/.
Marking one of these repeating tasks as complete replicates and positions an identical task to start the next day at the same time. In addition, it will also carry the assigned hyperlink.
This setup allows two very important and simultaneous functions:
- the task is visible only at the relevant time in the main window (Treading Water covered in Part I), and
- the related email or folder is easily accessed via the link or URL.
If you do not use gmail, another url or the link to the mail application (added by dragging the icon to the notes sections while holding ctrl prior to release) could work as well.
This same combination is a good target in creating any task whether related to email or otherwise as will be mentioned again below. Simply replace “email or folder” with “program” or “file.”
Use for Individual emails
The task “Checking e-mail” may be better defined as several sub-tasks that are not expressly written into the system:
- answer emails that require immediate action,
- answer emails that likely take less than 2 minutes,
- ignore emails that are not useful,
- file important emails that do not require action, and
- convert anything else into a task
The URL of the page of any specific email message in the notes section of a task and can therefore be used as the latter of these.
Using key commands, press command-L to highlight the URL, command-C to copy it, and command-V to paste it into the notes section of a new task.
Here is an example:
- Task: “Reply to John” — Context: “E-mail” — Start date: tod (which automatically converts to today’s date)
Note: “http://mail.google.com/code_specific_for_this_email”
The start date depends on the estimated response time for the email. If it is something that needs to be done today, it gets today’s start date and therefore shows up in the general/treading water window. If it can wait until the review next week, then it can be left without a date. If its timing is better left for tomorrow (careful with procrastination), then the time is set as tomorrow. If it needs to be reviewed daily, but I do not know when it will be answered it is flagged and is therefore reviewed daily as noted in the Part I.
Email Conversations and Time Stamps
Emails are quite often more than one-way communications and require some maintenance. When sending an email, the email is stored in the sent folder, but rarely do I ever go there. Instead, the URL of the conversation is pasted as the note of the task.
As an example, I have replied to John and am now waiting for his reply. The URL of the conversation is pasted into the note section in a task:
- Task: “Waiting for John’s Response” Context: “Waiting for …”
Note: “I last sent message 5/4/09 10:41 AM”
http://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox/XXXXXXXXXXXX
The note has an addition of a time stamp (Shift-Cmd-) and the URL. As mentioned in Part I, “Waiting for …” is a context that is reviewed daily. The addition of a time stamp allows me to see when I last had a conversation. If I want to refresh my memory, I can also click the URL to open a browser and see the conversation quickly.
As you can imagine, this same process of storing times of discussions works well for recording phone calls, too.
Shortening the Distance between Thought and Action
An essential goal we can achieve with task management is in shortening the distance between thought and action. However, doing so without focus invites the haphazard leaving of many tasks and projects to lie about only partially done.
The method outlined above has OmniFocus make something very easy to do, but only at the specific times wanted. OmniFocus becomes the central hub, with the application of e-mail in this case, as one of its spokes.
This allows the mind to relax and follow a natural least resistance path with increased efficiency. The mind is freed from having to remember a routine though essential task until it is necessary. Meanwhile, the activation energy to begin the task is reduced only when the time comes.
In a future post, I hope to address Reviewing as was noted in a comment to part I …
- Part I: How to Use OmniFocus (a guide for the advanced user)
- Part II: How to Use OmniFocus – Integrating Email
- Part III: How to Use OmniFocus – Head in the Clouds, Feet on the Ground, and
- Part IV: Using OmniFocus – Unlocking Future Projects
- Part V: Using OmniFocus – Projects, Attention, and Conditions Continued
I recently discovered a couple of nice tools to simplify the things you’re discussing here. There’s a very nice tool to automatically create a new task with a link to the web page you’re viewing here:
http://nik.me/omnifocus-uri-handler
I use this to create tasks from Gmail. Also, there’s a nice javascript function to create ticklers in Gcal from Gmail here:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/7676
It requires Greasemonkey and Firefox. For me it doesn’t seem to work as advertised (the button doesn’t appear), but pressing ‘;’ allows me to quickly create a Gcal reminder linked to the e-mail I’m viewing.
Hi David,
Thanks for the great suggestions. Looking at the first one- it looks to be quite useful, but I can’t seem to figure out how to get it to work. There may be more technical knowledge needed than the article lets on. I’ll keep trying to figure it out.
I have the same experience as you with the second. I don’t see any particular button, but the semi-colon adds a reminder.
–
Update – never mind – I got it to work. I didn’t realize there was a program to install. I had just dragged and dropped the link to tool bar without the installation. This is great! I’ll try to get savvy with it and update the post. Many thanks!
– Kourosh
Kourosh,
Sorry, I should have explained how to get the script at my first link above to work, since I also had trouble at first. First download the Omnifocus URI Handler app:
http://nik.me/system/files/sites/inik.net/files/OmniFocus_URI_Handler_0.zip
Then click and drag one of the bookmarklet links to you bookmarks bar. Then navigate to a page you’d like to send to your inbox and click on the bookmark.
Hope that helps!
edit: I see that you have already figured this out. Perhaps the instructions will be of use to others.
No problem – got it working – thanks again!
Hopefully, I’ll get a moment soon to update the post to reflect using it.
Great series of posts… I’ve had an item in OF to read these for a while now, but hadn’t had the time to get to them until today. 🙂
I’ve been using the general methods listed above for some time now in terms of linking to e-mail messages from OF tasks, although the keyboard shortcuts and the datestamp trick in “Waiting for” are quite useful.
As a very mobile user, I have an extra step in my process, however. Since there’s no simple way to create a task and link the e-mail message to it on the iPhone, I have an additional Folder/GMail label called “Action Items” and a daily recurring task to “Review Action Items” each morning as part of my daily review.
How I use this is thus: When I’m mobile and I receive an e-mail message that needs to be actioned in the future (ie, not today), I moved it to the “Action Items” folder using the iPhone Mail client (you can also do this via the GMail Mobile Browser, but it’s an extra step to label and then archive). It sits off in that area until my next daily review, at which time I can follow the normal e-mail triage process with it (do, delegate, defer). From there, if I need to create a task to action it, I then do so, pasting the link into the message, and removing the “Action Items” label (since this is no longer required once the item is in OmniFocus).
I keep similar labels for items that get kept for reference or later reading, but don’t necessarily require action.
Items that need to be actioned today but can’t be done from my iPhone get left in my inbox so that they stay on my radar and get picked up when I’m back at my desk at the end of the day.
I find this generally helps me keep to an “Inbox Zero” state as I’m out and about checking my e-mail on the go, rather than letting things pile up and having to re-triage them when I get back to my desk.
Hi Jesse,
That’s a nice idea on the “Action Items” in Gmail. Presently, I star the ones that I want to get to and have a review for importing starred emails into OF daily at 10am. Once it’s in, I remove the star – very similar to the Action Items work.
I just downloaded the gmail app you mentioned after reading your comment. It’s great for that ability to add the star or sort in folders. Prior, I would just mark something important as “unread” until I could get to it from the computer. The gmail app allows a smoother system.
All in all, we’re creating “buckets” that eventually trickle into the central bucket of OF.
Hi,
Nice article! It’s got some interesting ways of using the notes field in it.
On a slightly related note: In Safari, I find using the Clippings feature to be great for clipping text on a webpage. It didn’t work in Firefox though (and also I’m often on a Windows PC at work) so I wrote a bookmarklet that makes use of Google mail to add in clippings into OmniFocus. The downside being that you do still have to have Mail.app running to process the incoming email but that’s a price I was willing to pay.
Article here: http://paulstonedesign.com/blog/article/bookmarklet-to-add-the-currently-viewed-web-page-to-omnifocus/
Thanks,
Paul.
Great articles – Thanks!
I’m curious how you or any of your readers handle the creation of waiting for tasks upon sending of emails. I send a lot of emails for which I will then await a response. I like to create a Waiting For task for each of these. However, I’m doing this manually and it is tedious. (I’m using Mac Mail and Omnifocus)
Has anyone found a way to automate the creation of the Waiting For task upon sending en email? I used to use Outlook on a PC and there was a great GTD Addon that did this. I’d love the same functionality on for Omnifocus.
Thanks!
Jim
Hi Jim,
I’m not sure how to do this but I think it’s a great idea. You could send an email to Omnigroup with the suggestion. They’ve been responsive to my own requests of features or support.
– Kourosh
I’ve been playing around w/ GMail’s filters to get notes in there. Just thought of an idea: BCC the address you use to send stuff into omni (directions in preferences) (name+omnifocus@website.com). Hope that helps…
Jim, My response comes a few months after this post so you may have already discovered this, but you might like to take a look at the mailtags and mail act-on applications from indev. They allow you to create an outbox rule within mail.app that creates a waiting for action within omnifocus when an email you’ve tagged as “waiting for” is sent.
Blogged about it, linked to it, and for good measure threw in a Digg as well. Thanks for the effort.
Great articles. There’s a lot of nice rmationhere, though I did want to let you know something, I’m running Redhat with the up-to-date beta of Firefox, and the design of your site is kind of wonky for me. I can read the articles, but the navigation doesn’t function so well.