entropic principal: Using Thunderbird to Get Things Done

Clever way to use Thunderbird’s excellent (semantic) flags to implement a GTD-inspired email triage system:

So I also have a saved search I call “Next Actions” to keep up with the stuff I need to pay attention to. The criteria for this one is: “Match any of the following: Label is Action Required; Label is None; Label is Wait”. See what that does? Anything I need to do something with, anything I’m waiting for somebody else to do, and anything that I haven’t made the first decision on, all shows up in one place. As soon as I mark something as Archive, Delete, or Defer, it disappears from this view on my next refresh. So my to-do list is always up-to-date, always right there. As soon as a task is complete, I can mark the message as Archive and forget about it.

I’d love for Mail.app to allow multiple semantic flags like this. You can get pretty close with Mail Tags or categories in Entourage, but it would be great to have this kind of functionality native to the app and easily exposable via Spotlight.

Technorati Tags: email, GTD, productivity, thunderbird