Email Hack: Using Draft instead of @Reply folder
At my current day job, email takes fair bit of my time. That’s why I find every opportunity to optimize my email workflow. I have been using @Reply, @Wait, and @Read folders for actionable emails and those can save me countless hours on searching those action required emails.
I have been testing my workflow a bit recently - mainly on moving emails that require replying to @Reply folder.
Now once I found any email that needs to reply:
- Press reply immediately
- Within 1 or 2 minutes, I will write down any thoughts I have
- If I can finish replying within 2 minutes, I will send it out immediately.
- If not, I will save it into my draft folder.
- Finally, I assign a time to reply all those pending emails that require a chunk of time.
The biggest advantage that I see from this workflow is that I will not need two folders for email-needs-reply anymore. Second, all those thoughts that I got when reading the emails will be preserved and written down.
Any suggestions or comments on this?
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Comments
elle bueno says on October 9th, 2006 at 9:20 am
I use the draft folder in Outlook for poor-woman’s forms: I set up a “blank” template email that I find myself sending out four or more times daily, usually request for comment or approval.
When I need to send out a fresh request, I select the email in my draft folder, then use the keystroke Ctrl F to make a copy of the email, filling it out with the specific information needed.
This keeps a copy of the “form” in my draft box, ready to use, and all approval or correction requests are formatted quickly in the same way, even though I don’t have the ability to create and save forms on our network.
Geoff says on October 9th, 2006 at 11:27 am
@elle
I go a step further and save the “form” as a signature file, then all I have to do is open a new email or reply and hit alt-i chose that sig file and fill in the blanks.
Wayne says on October 9th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
The problem with using draft is you might mistakenly send an unfinished email out.
Sunil Bajpai says on October 10th, 2006 at 11:38 am
Yes, Wayne, that’s a big risk sometimes. So I cut the email address out and paste it as the first line in the message. (Two keystrokes.)
When the mail is ready to send, just reverse the steps. It’s worth the extra effort.
Glenn says on October 10th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
To avoid accidentally sending out a draft e-mail don’t put the person’s name in the address field. Put it in the text field if you need to remember it.
I’m one of the 10% who use Lotus Notes. I use flags and the commment field for much of the same purpose as saving to drafts. Plus I canset alarms. I review the flags every morning.
Mark Freedman says on October 11th, 2006 at 11:54 am
As soon as I install Outlook on a machine, I immediately turn off the option that automatically sends e-mail. That adds a level of protection against accidental premature sends.
The default is insane, and I’m sure the cause of more than one damaging e-mail.
Matthew Cornell says on November 5th, 2006 at 7:45 pm
I’ve found myself doing this and considered it a no-no. The reason? One more place to check for action (I’m a GTD practitioner). That said, if you like drafts, why not use them? But other email needing action, but perhaps not an immediate reply (e.g., please write report x by y) wouldn’t fit in the drafts solution, which means another folder (e.g., @action). Nice idea.
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