#Update:
There has been more than one year ago when I wrote this email and as with everything to do with productivity tips or any general method improve your life, there is no best way, just the a method which works for you. The trick is not to quit.
Well, I still use thid GTD approach in Gmail. But I mainly use the #do-fast bucket and every weekend, or every two weeks, I go through all items in this bucket and either solve them or send them to #do-whenever.
I have already wrote about how heavily customized my Gmail account is and everyday I jump on the computer I still have around 20 to 30 new emails to digest on my inbox. Sending them to a #do-fast is my daily savior!
Let me know if you’re using some method like this or anything similar.
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Recently I have been some reading about time management, namely, Hack Your Day.
From there I came across some sites that lead me to a increase on email on email processing.
According to GTD, Get Things Done, I have the following buckets, which are merely Gmail labels:
#DO-FAST
#DO-LATER
#DO-WEVER
#DO-W8
The following Gmail filters:
| Matches: #DO-W8 DO-W8 do-w8 Do this: Mark as read, Apply label “#DO-W8″ |
| Matches: subject:(#DO-FAST DO-FAST do-fast) Do this: Mark as read, Apply label “#DO-FAST” |
| Matches: subject:(#DO-WEVER DO-WEVER do-wever) Do this: Mark as read, Apply label “#DO-WEVER” |
| Matches: subject:(#DO-LATER DO-LATER do-later) Do this: Mark as read, Apply label “#DO-LATER” |
This buckets only receive (are labeled) items which I cannot process in less than 30 seconds, as for example a simple , wedding styled, “Yes, I do”.
#DO-FAST :: Receives everything which needs to be processed in the same day
#DO-LATER :: Receives everything which needs to be processed in the same week
#DO-WEVER :: Receives everything I want to check same day later
#DO-W8 :: Is waiting for an answer. It can also be in another DO-* bucket.
On the end of the day I process the #DO-FAST. If I don’t finish/assign a task I’ll have to send it to #DO-LATER.
On the end of the week I process the #DO-LATER. If I don’t I’ll have to send it to #DO-WEVER.
Of course I can leave them in the same bucket and reiterate everything once more.
The key thing is that any part of the path #DO-WEVER - >#DO-LATER -> #DO-FAST is not permitted.
Everytime I need to send something to a bucket I just send a mail to myself with the label “do-fast”, “do-later”, etc