Someone please build this: Anti-shelving filter for GMail
So you’ve done all your GTD karate today. Hundreds of mails out of the way. The balls are at their court, just waiting for their follow-up. Because they do follow up right? What if they don’t, how do you catch them, then?
One of the biggest problems of getting things done is other people. And that’s not going to change.
The people I’ve talked to all have different ways of doing this. They all work. But they’re also wrong.
- In Entourage or Outlook, adding a task with a deadline to the email before sending it.
- BCC’ing oneself and letting that copy stay in the inbox until a reply comes in
- Simply trusting that the other part will reply (…)
- Various real-life actions such as phone calls and colleagues
- Moving the mail into a”for follow up” folder
- Adding the follow-up to one’s own todo lists
The last one underlines what’s wrong with the rest. It’s adding to my load what should be in yours. The ball is in neither court, floating somewhere over the net, and the person with the most incentive will follow up. If they remember.
Enter the marketplace
The GMail extension mocked up above would be a good way to make it okay that the ball floats over the net. Even simpler could also do just fine. The only real problem with it is that it’s not real yet. I’m hoping the rise of the Google Apps Marketplace will join GMail labs in improving email in small ways like this.
Or maybe I should integrate it into my half-done, half-abandoned calendar project?
UPDATE: What do you know, an almost exact version of this appears in the Etacts browser extension. I installed it and it actually appears. To things though: How do I get the actual reminder, other than going to Etacts? I’d love for this feature to be available without having to breach my entire email database to a third party. Anyway, thumbs up.
UPDATE II: An interesting comment thread over at the Consumerist blog is unfolding. Please note that the “re-send” option in the mockup is not really the point of this idea. In fact, I agree, it’s a pretty terrible addition.
March 15th, 2010 at 11:19 am
That is a neat feature. Building applications for Gmail looks complicated a little.
I came up with a small analytics for Gmail, but going beyond the left bar seems not possible now.
http://axemclion.github.com/#projects/gids.html
March 15th, 2010 at 11:49 am
Hm, okay. I’ve played around with a email bot you could cc on mails you need a follow-up to. Maybe that would serve as a first version – and, it would work in all email clients.
March 15th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
Etacts just launched a few weeks ago and they do this same thing very elegantly – http://etacts.com.
They’re a personal CRM system that integrate into your gmail. You sign in on their site, they cull your email by contacts, and remind you when you’ve lost touch with people. Suddenly, I’m the guy who remembers to reach out to his college buddies all the time as well as business contacts.
Then if you’re an ATT wireless customer, you can use it to track your cell phone calls to the same contacts. Very useful.
March 15th, 2010 at 12:22 pm
[...] So listen up: take that free time or whatever it is that lets you start up side projects and implement this feature in gmail: [...]
March 15th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
I’ve seen etacts lately which is supposed to do something like that and much more. It didn’t work for me for some reason so I didn’t get back to it. It might be worth a try.
March 15th, 2010 at 12:31 pm
That etacts service does cover some of the things that we talked about yesterday Morten.
Only “ehh” I have is that this is another external link in the chain, and thus minimizing privacy. I’d like to see it as core functions (lab) in gmail.
But tip of the hat to Etact for the good work.
- Michel
March 15th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
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March 15th, 2010 at 2:48 pm
Ehm, isn’t that what the @waitingFor “label” is for in GTD?
March 15th, 2010 at 3:52 pm
[...] So listen up: take that free time or whatever it is that lets you start up side projects and implement this feature in gmail: [...]
March 15th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
We made something a lot like this for Outlook – you can take the message out of your inbox for a week, and after a week passes, it will come back, marked unread. If the person hasn’t replied, you can follow up, and if they have, just move the message out of your inbox again.
We’re thinking about making the same thing for Gmail, but haven’t had time yet.
March 15th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
I’d prefer the form of reminder be that the mail be flagged rather than have an email follow-up sent, but yeah, I’ve wanted a feature like this for a long time. It’s a very common problem.
March 15th, 2010 at 7:54 pm
I would love to see this feature in Gmail. Could definitely be implemented with GreaseMonkey.
March 15th, 2010 at 8:03 pm
What’s this font apolline that you’re using? It makes the page look like shit…
March 15th, 2010 at 11:58 pm
[...] zag dit voorbij komen, en moest het met jullie delen. Een bijzondere en uiterst handige toevoeging aan [...]
March 18th, 2010 at 12:28 am
This is the most promising solution so far: followupthen.com. It works by simply cc’ing or bcc’ing your email to 1week@followupthen.com. Or 2years, 1day, etc. No sign up. No privacy breach. The only minus is that it doesn’t know if receiver actually does reply.
March 19th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
I wish someone would code a feature into human beings that compels them to respond to email instead of me having to remind them to. Yes, getting an email reminder would be nice, but it can easily be ignored like the other emails.
March 20th, 2010 at 6:12 pm
very simple and yet interesting concept ..
i’m sure we would see this feature very soon :)
March 21st, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Killer idea. Should be patented! But now too late.
Matt
March 23rd, 2010 at 2:41 pm
I think I’ll prepare a “lorem ipsum” template e-mail just to respond to boring, needy hacks like you.
March 23rd, 2010 at 2:44 pm
What are you referring to @speedwell ?
March 23rd, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Just go here: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=suggestions.cs
March 23rd, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Anyone who, like Morten, thinks my life just wouldn’t be complete without the electronic equivalent of a toddler yanking on my skirt, yelling “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”
March 23rd, 2010 at 7:43 pm
This is the same kind of bad idea priority flags are. Anybody with the authority to compel me to urgently respond to email knows it (and so doesn’t use the flag because they don’t need it), leaving only the people who don’t have that power — which means that I read mail in reverse priority order.
March 23rd, 2010 at 9:43 pm
Morten just sent me an e-mail (because yes, I use my actual e-mail when commenting). I deleted it without bothering to read it. I can’t wait to start getting his precious little automated pleas for attention. ROFL
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:35 pm
I’m curious…
How do you use e-mail in your daily business communication @speedwell ?
If you have more than plenty of conversations and leads to follow up on, how do you manage it? Do you use a system outside your e-mail system like a task manager?
- Michel
April 1st, 2010 at 2:12 am
[...] So listen up: take that free time or whatever it is that lets you start up side projects and implement this feature in gmail: [...]
May 2nd, 2010 at 12:15 pm
[...] So listen up: take that free time or whatever it is that lets you start up side projects and implement this feature in gmail: [...]
May 31st, 2010 at 11:00 am
[...] blog.So listen up: take that free time or whatever it is that lets you start up side projects and implement this feature in gmail:It will be so incredibly useful that I’m shocked no one has done it before. Shit, if Hotmail [...]
June 4th, 2010 at 11:32 am
[...] So listen up: take that free time or whatever it is that lets you start up side projects and implement this feature in gmail: [...]
June 9th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
[...] So listen up: take that free time or whatever it is that lets you start up side projects and implement this feature in gmail: [...]
July 9th, 2010 at 11:58 am
[...] So listen up: take that free time or whatever it is that lets you start up side projects and implement this feature in gmail: [...]