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of open loops and non-concluded threads
terrence p | Jun 18 2007
Dear 43 Folderers I am curious to hear how folks deal with open loops, in particular, the open loops that are made out of those many, many emails you send out into the ether with ne'r a response to be had. I'm not talking about those cheesy "hey how you doing messages" either. No, I mean those important messages you send to your boss, or colleagues, or underlings that you need a response from. Important things like: to Personnel, what about that salary increase I filed a request for three years ago? or to the Big Boss, about all these huge equipment donations we're receiving? Yeah, we completely ran out of space to store them about six months ago. Where do you want me to store the new 100,000 square feet worth of new donations you're expecting next week?" I realize my query is part technology and part personality/communication skills. As for the latter, let me just say that I'm organized. I've got everything out in front of me, my ubiquitous capture device handy, and my trusted system running. But I guess what I realize is that trusted system running in the background isn't doing a very good job keeping me aware of my many, many open loops. A project manager's nightmare for sure. So from a technological standpoint, how are folks keeping their open loop flags in the air? I work mainly out of Mail.app and the only way I've been able to deal with this is by tagging each outgoing message with "follow up" (by means of employing MailTags) and creating a smart folder to look for those messages in my Sent folder. During my weekly review I look over this folder and it is pure misery. At what point do you stop listening to folks say "I'm sorry. there's so much to do and I'm just way too too busy" and start hearing "You suck. You're emails are unimportant to me?" Thanks. Any input would help. - - Aw nuts. Now I'm wondering . . . is anyone going to respond to THIS message? 6 Comments
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 re: Email & File SystemSubmitted by Todd V on June 20, 2007 - 9:57pm.
Yes. One of my main reasons for making RSD was because of my constant frustration of having my data locked into file formats or programs I couldn't access years later. This is also true for email. A person may have thousands of emails locked into their email program divided into folders, etc. and then the program changes or dies or doesn't work with the new OS upgrade, and suddenly an entire inventory of important things is no longer accessible. Because of this I try to get everything out of my email programs and into the file system. One "trick" I've been using with Ready-Set-Do! -- which creates an "Inbox" folder on my desktop -- is to check my emails for emails with more than one actionable in them. Often there will be three or four tasks in the same email, and while one can "tag" the email as actionable or whatever the mind goes numb to it after awhile because it is forced to deal with it as a single email rather than what it is: three or four tasks I need to do. It should be three or four emails, but there is no way to make it such in Mail.app. So, what to do? What I do is use the "select-option-drag" technique in OS X when using Mail.app. I just select the text of each, individual task in the email, then hold the option key down, and then drag that piece of text to my desktop "Inbox". I then do the same for the other three pieces of text in that email. Then I delete the email from my Mail program. Ready-Set-Do! then allows me to run the Get Inbox to Empty script and I can then process each of these newly created "clippings" of text in my Inbox as individual items --> What is it? Is it Actionable? Do it in less than 2 minutes? etc. I've found this technique of "individualizing" hidden actions in my emails to be extremely helpful to my workflow. And getting things out of my Mail.app program into the file system just gives me the peace of mind that all of that stuff won't get locked into a program I can no longer use with data I can no longer access. This is what's working for me, but I'd like to hear more about your way of GTDing and how tags are working for you. » POSTED IN:
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