Processing Procesing Processing

SimmonSydney

Registered
hey Legends

I would love to hear how you all do your digital processing. I need some ideas.

I, like Kelly mentioned in the webinar, recently had the three fold nature of work click for me and had my ah ha moment.

So I am going back and forth between, processing, pre defined work and unplanned

But I feel I am forever processing and am often up long into the night trying to get those inboxes back to zero:

To make things worse I now have 3 digital inboxes because my perfect system seems to be Outlool for email, Todoist for list manager and Evernote for reference

My work is heavily email based. Between 300-600 per day. And we have about 150 active projects. Some of those projects have hundreds of emails. So I like to keep them together on Evernote for fast reference as it is much faster than outlook search.

So if I have an actionable email, I process it and send it to Evernote, then also goes as a task in Todoist. But then I have to process the email in outlook, Todoist and Evernote. So with the volume I have you can see my problem

What do you guys do ?
 

Gardener

Registered
I'm feeling the need for more detail.

~ Are all of those 300-600 emails actionable?

~ Just how slow is Outlook? How often do you do this search? How much time would you say that the EverNote search saves you?

~ Could you act on the tasks in Outlook, then dump all the associated emails to Evernote once a week or month as a mindless bulk task, so that they're there for reference?

~ Is each email truly a separate task, or could it be somehow transformed into an item on a list or a searchable item?

For example, let's imagine that you receive dozens of emails every day requesting that you send the emailer some sort of marketing package. Let's imagine that the email actually requires some thought--you can't just automate it for a single-button "Send package". Maybe you have to read the email to see if the appropriate package is the one for men, women, children, or cats. However, while the task still can't be fully automated, maybe you can add some automation to the tracking of the task. Maybe you dump the email to Evernote with the string "MARKETINGPACKAGE" in the subject or a tag or something.

Then, in ToDoist, you have a repeating item, "Handle this week's marketing package requests." You search for the string MARKETINGPACKAGE and work your way through all those emails. So, one ToDoist entry for many many emails.

I don't know if this example is remotely relevant to your situation. But I can't help thinking that if you get hundreds of emails per day, there must be some commonality between some of them that you could use to reduce the tracking labor.
 

kelstarrising

Kelly | GTD expert
Hi @SimmonSydney. Per usual, my friend @Gardener has great advice and insights.

I have a similar system to you in that my email is in Apple Mail, my lists in Wunderlist, and reference in Evernote. But I never move emails (well, almost never) to Evernote or Wunderlist. Emails all live very happily in very specific topic folders in Apple Mail, which I can easily find because the names are specific and intuitive and I can rely on search (which is subpar at best in Apple Mail) when I need to. But mostly I know which folder to go to, so that's never really been a hiccup for me.

Re: To make things worse I now have 3 digital inboxes because my perfect system seems to be Outlool for email, Todoist for list manager and Evernote for reference

Are those really all inboxes? Like you are using the inbox feature of all 3? Or is Outlook email an inbox and Evernote and Wunderlist are organizing tools? Just trying to understand how you are using Wunderlist and Evernote.
 

SimmonSydney

Registered
Hi Kelly and Gardner. Thanks so much for your replys. I feel it's just as easy for me to cover both in the one post here.


~ Are all of those 300-600 emails actionable?

The answer to this one is absolutely not. I was chatting to John about this. I believe maybe 100 are.

~ Just how slow is Outlook? How often do you do this search? How much time would you say that the EverNote search saves you?

~ Could you act on the tasks in Outlook, then dump all the associated emails to Evernote once a week or month as a mindless bulk task, so that they're there for reference?

These 2 points have made me think. You are probably right about the bulk transfer. I could do this.

The reason I have them all together and the reason I transfer them, is because I change the title to be easier to see at a glance. For example 3 emails one after the other in my project reference list will be :

CUSTOMER X - TOMATO PASTE SALE - Simon submits pricing

CUSTOMER X - TOMATO PASTE SALE - Ciustome responds price too high

CUSTOMER X - TOMATO PASTE SALE - Product manager can't match, mark as a loss

Our email chains are rediculous. I had one the other day with 65 emails in one chain. So in a hurry I find it hard to find that one email where my boss says "show me where you told him we were walking away". Also when we are on holiday people look after the customers for me go into my project sheet and can quickly see what I have done.

However this could all just be my OCD kicking in doing it this way

And Kelly, in regards to this one :

Are those really all inboxes? Like you are using the inbox feature of all 3? Or is Outlook email an inbox and Evernote and Wunderlist are organizing tools? Just trying to understand how you are using Wunderlist and Evernote.

- so what I mean here is that outlook has the barrage of emails I receive (for work...Gmail is personal email but let's not worry about that right now) so that is the inbox for email

When I get an actionable email, I use the outlook add in to send the email to evernote. And I use a noteclone by tagging a certain way that it puts a task in todoist.

But all these go into the inbox of the program. So I then have to go to evernote and put them in folders and then go to Todoist and move the tasks into the appropriate context. So I am touching it 3 times if that makes sense

I have had a play today and found that I can use the outlook add in to put my Evernote note directly into a folder instead of the inbox, so by tagging to-doist I guess that skips one step.

But it's really the naming convention that makes me want the emails on Evernote. As I use evernote links eventually and have them all in my project note.

Wow putting this on paper is making even myself think I am making hard work of this :)
 

Kmet

Registered
Is it an option to cut Wunderlist out of your system and manage everything within Evernote? This way you would only need to touch your data twice.

I am saying this because I was experimenting as well with Evernote + Wunderlist/ToDoIst, but I ditched the system pretty fast because it was too clunky.
 

SimmonSydney

Registered
Hey Mate

Is it an option to cut Wunderlist out of your system and manage everything within Evernote? This way you would only need to touch your data twice.

I am saying this because I was experimenting as well with Evernote + Wunderlist/ToDoIst, but I ditched the system pretty fast because it was too clunky.
I used to have my list in EN. But I must admit I'm a sucker to be able to "swipe left to Archive" or "swipe right to put a due date" haha. Silly I know. But I found EN a pain having to Move it to a completed list or different notebook each time
 
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