"I was coaching someone recently who had tons of emails that fell into this gray zone and her reaction was to simply file them into a Reference folder."

Actually, this is an excellent default strategy - as soon as one commits to *not* doing anything about it anymore. Did you encourage her to simply forget about that "I'll get back..." and let go?

Hi Rolf,

Sure, if the decision has been made that there's no action, but you want to keep it, a Reference folder is a great place for it. But what many people do is move it to a folder but they still have their attention on doing something about it like make a decision or complete an action. I see this all the time when people setup mail rules. I'm not opposed to mail rules for smart sorting of true junk/spam or filing of nice to reads that you can treat like a newsstand, but not when there is a chance a decision still needs to be made about any of those emails. That then puts people into an even harder position of tracking down a scattered inbox.

When I was coaching this person, I kept asking her, "What's your next action?" For most of them, she decided she really had no action and let it go, others she tracked on a Someday list and a final set was really current actions.

-Kelly

Journals are slow. Excel is slow. Outlook is slow. Even notepad is slow. For a todo list to work (for me), it must be able to pop it up in a snap.

So, what do I use? StickyNotes, by Tom Revell. It's free. Like PostIt(R), you stick a note on your screen.

It's FAST and SIMPLE. And it has several handy features like sleep (hide for some time), recurring notes, font and color settings and even network/email transfers. You can even take it with you on a USB stick.

Interesting remark about the email rules. I erased all mines a few weeks ago (at last!). I guess I had set them up not because I needed them, but just because my email client was offering me this functionality. And they were bugging me since... Red button syndrome?

My main gray-ish zone was of another kind: emails asking for a reply about something I have not done yet ("what's the status/results of this and that?"). Two actions implied by such a mail: do the thing, and reply the mail. Should I reply "not done!", or should I rush during two days to do it and then reply "done!"? Usually, I answer "not done" and I keep on doing what I had planed. But there is some people who really don't like receiving a "not done".

My ability to answer "not done" greatly increased with my confidence about what I was not doing. And this confidence greatly increased when I started using a GTD complient software keeping track of everything I had checked as done. I can now answer "not done, because I was busy doing ".

Kelly,

Great post. I fall into the gray zone trap every now and then - usually when I am tired.

You wrote: "I received an email recently that could have easily fallen into that gray zone if I let it. My first reaction was to delete the email but I knew the person would be expecting my reply. And they would have every reason to expect my reply because I've handled this kind of thing in the past, even though I don't consider it core to my job. So I can't blame them for sending it, I've trained them that it's OK to send that kind of input to me until I tell them otherwise."

I receive many emails that fall into the same category. Just curious, what did you specifically do with this email?

Hi Mike,

I sent a quick reply. My "chewing" over this one took longer than the actual reply!

Kelly

I think this is great advice. But I can't agree with your suggestion to modify the Subject of an e-mail. This screws up the threading systems on some e-mail clients (ex: Google's GMail). I rely on the threading systems to keep all the information together, so I don't have to search for it or try to remember it.

You're right--changing the subject line in Gmail won't work since threading relies on that subject line staying the same. Even if you tried to change it in Gmail, you'd have to forward it to yourself to even edit it, as I recall.

I have this cable that I mistakenly ordered. It would cost more to return in shipping than it is worth. I need to get rid of it, but I cannot decide how. Now I don't even know where to put "decide what to do with cable" in my system. Any advice?

Hi Barak,

In my experience, "to decide" usually means you need more information to make the decision, not that you're waiting for time to pass to decide. I'm guessing you don't want to throw it away, so what other information would be helpful for you to know? For example, who else might need it that you could give it to? Where you could donate it? Could you just hang on to it as a supply in case you have a need in the future for it?

That's how I'd approach it.

Kelly

Before I found the GTD download for Outlook, I had created my own folders (i.e. @Action, @Snooze, etc.) To the downloaded structure I added a "Not Ready" folder. I suppose these are the "I know that I need to do something, but I just can't get there right now" messages. I check it at the end of every day and DO something with each - - delete, file or create an action. I have had a empty Inbox for 2 weeks because I can account for the 15 "Not Ready" messages I get every day and not disrupt the actions I need to take.