2024-08-16
It's a Friday, and my e-mails are getting a bit messy. The problem I find is that I have many different chains each of which interlace heavily, and so I struggle to figure out where I need to do something, where not, etc. How can I best manage e-mail?
I have to remember also that e-mails interface in a way with tasks, in that e-mails can be the parents of tasks, and I ideally would have little duplication. I will need to manage e-mails that are exclusively e-mails, and do not (or not majorly) turn into tasks of themselves. If they do, I suppose I need a way to link them, e.g. via an ID.
So how do I do this? Well, I just track the chain, I guess, but I really don't want to have to add **more** work in terms of tracking the e-mails, keeping the tracker up to date, etc.
That said, I want to at least not forget about e-mails. Perhaps do it on a regular basis, and schedule it in? For instance, I can schedule in to check and work out what e-mails need to be handled. I can also track tasks from that, I suppose.
I want to be able to track my tasks and emails without having another thing to manage. I also want it to be able to remain up to date, so that I don't need to constantly dedicate time to it.
For emails, I suppose I just need a record of things, and so I can dedicate say, a half hour every week to just updating this. It does take time, sadly, and is largely busywork. I want to not have that, but still get the benefit of keeping a track of tasks and mails and being able to know which need responding on, so that I do not end up going too long without sending chasers, etc. if I'm not getting responses.
What about the flagging system that Outlook has? I could do this, but of course that does not give the level of overview detail that I want, not does it inform me when I ought to do something. Of course, I could make use of the follow up date to then list out exactly what I have to do on each day, and then block in, say, half an hour each day (potentially more) to go through each and chase them, say after a week or so. Of course, to do this I would likely put a follow up flag on my e-mail that I send, if I'm waiting for someone else. Each day I just allot half an hour to doing chasers, etc. That way, nothing is dropped. I can give chasers each week.
I suppose that would work in terms of emails. Then, I need to still work out what is to be done regarding tasks. I need to include some way of scheduling, and prioritising, that does not rely solely on deadlines (which have their own negative effect, in that an overdue task becomes a burden and eventually forgettable by way of "oh, it's so far gone". A system of prioritisation is required, and one that also copes with distractions, etc. Perhaps, setting tasks to be done for a particular day if possible, and having this correspond to the priority number of the task (not merely a rating, but a specific index giving the exact order to do in)... I could of course neglect this a little, but it would be useful in that I could look at it each day to understand what I must do. There are also occasions I must do something tomorrow morning, so that could be accounted for as well. For instance, I could have a tag applicable to a task "nextmorn" that puts it at the top of the TODOs for review tomorrow morn.
So, let's go more concrete so I can see if I can put this together. The question is also whether I want to try this in Excel, or see if I can make it in C# or something (Windows Forms? how in the good Lord's name does one actually make a GUI program nowadays on Windows?) though I'm not sure I could actually get it onto the company laptop in that case, probably would be caught by some malware detector something or other.
I want a task manager that has something to the effect of:
Hmm... I'll have to think a little more about specifics of implementation, but I guess this is really what I want. So, what's the workflow? (or, user story or whatever nonsense it's called in the corporate world.)
I receive an email, saying: do X. I mark the email as a task in taskslist, and prioritise it to get it done.
I receive an email that needs following up on. I mark it in Outlook as an follow up, say, next week, then review this follow up section, say, every day.
I receive a task in person, write it up, then do it when I can.
etc etc.
It could work. I think really testing prioritisation would be best to see if that is good. The initial experiment, that I might not need anything apart from deadlines, has failed.
So, that's enough on that boring topic. I've noticed how incredibly easy it is now to write 1,000 words consistently. It started out as difficult, and now I often write far more than that. Of course, I am also far less brief, but it is good, overall, I suppose.
And I'm 24 in! Soon to be 25. That means I'm 2.5% in, overall. It is very slow progress, yet it is gradually getting there. @visakanv has been doing it for thirteen years at this point, and has hit 860 or so. I suppose for myself it will take as long, as well. I note that in the initial wvs of @visakanv, he was writing the 1k words in about 15 minutes each time. I'm a far slower writer and generally write these in closer to an hour, or sometimes over the course of several hours with breaks, interruptions, etc. Perhaps I should try to time it to be, say, 30 minutes, and then lower it down gradually to 25, 20, 15, etc. to improve my writing speed.
Ok. Have a good one.