![]() In Mailgun I create a Route that forwards emails from a middleman address I control to the Todoist project’s email address. I have a Mailgun account and that gives me a solution to the problem. ![]() This means that one cannot register a Todoist project email address in GMail as a trusted email address to which to forward email. Sadly, although Todoist provides an email address for every project, one cannot receive those emails outside Todoist in order to click GMail’s verification link. GMail sends it a message, you read it and click a link, then GMail knows that you own that email address and consent to receive forwarded emails to it. To forward the emails with GMail, one must verify the email address. After doing this five or six times, I wanted to set up a GMail filter to automatically forward the email to my “Urgent Email” project in Todoist. Since I don’t look at email every day, and since those emails fall into the “Answer Soon” category, and since those emails follow a pattern (same sender, same words in the subject), I end up creating very similar Todoist tasks in the same project to remind me to answer these questions. This sends me an email and that’s how I know that a question is waiting for me to answer it. Members of The jbrains Experience, my online learning and consulting circle, can ask me a question by posting a comment in a comment system. The emails that end up as specific Todoist tasks, rather than simply going into the “Answer Eventually” pile (also known as “When I Get Around To It”), expose a flaw in the system, at least when I start trying to automate it a little. In very rare occasions, like “Book this flight before the price goes up”, I drop what I’m doing to deal with the email. It usually takes only a few minutes to process the email inbox this way, so even if I find the message very urgent, it can wait 12 minutes while I get the rest of this email inbox out of the way. Label it “Answer Now” and come back to it once I’ve processed the rest of the inbox.Label it “Answer Soon” and send it to Todoist as a specific task in the project “Urgent Email”.Label it “Answer Eventually” and rely on my standing Todoist task every week that says, “Respond to some ‘Answer Eventually’ emails.”.Archive it, because I might need to refer it.Send it to Evernote, because I’m likely going to need to refer it.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. ![]()
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