Snoozing GMail

[jbischke]

Hey all. Just made the switch from PC to Mac in the last couple of weeks. For the most part I'm digging it. I'm using GMail rather than Outlook which is great but I do have one thing I'm trying to figure out how to do. With Outlook I had a plug-in installed that allowed me to "snooze" messages. In other words, if I received an e-mail from a friend and wanted to reply to it on the weekend I could hit snooze for 3 days (say I got it on Wednesday) and it would go out of my Inbox and re-appear on Saturday. I LOVED this feature.

Does anyone know how to do something simliar with GMail?

TIA!

[RT Wolf]

That sounds really cool, like a tickler system for Gmail. If you're familiar with GTD, you know what a tickler system is, essentially a reminder system, gives you back stuff on a specific day. In paper, you have 43 folders, 12 named after the months and 31 numbered for the days. At the beginning of each day, pull out the next day's folder and empty into your inbox. Stuff that you want to be reminded of on a specific date is put into a specific folder. Handy concept if you work in paper.

I was looking for an email alternative and found a bunch but none that fit my needs. Here's one greasemonkey script:

GMail - GTD Tickler – Userscripts.org

Here's a thing that oyu just email to an address and it gets back to you:

FutureMail

[jbischke]

Yeah, exactly like a tickler system. I'm becoming a huge freak for getting my Inbox down to zero on a regular basis. However, I often get e-mails that I don't want to (or can't) take action on immediately. The Outlook GTD plug-in feature that allowed me to do that was worth the entire price of the product alone. The closest thing I've found outside of Outlook is GooToDo which is good but not exactly what I'm looking for (works great for tracking to-dos though).

[shant121]

I'm becoming a huge freak for getting my Inbox down to zero on a regular basis. However, I often get e-mails that I don't want to (or can't) take action on immediately. The Outlook GTD plug-in feature that allowed me to do that was worth the entire price of the product alone.

Oooh thats what I want too for Gmail. maybe we can recommend to google. maybe they are already working on it.

[Brutha]

How about adding a star to those email that require future attention?

[jbischke]

The star thing is good but doesn't help you in terms of the goal of getting to a clean Inbox.

What I've starting doing is the following:

Most of my snoozes were to Saturday where I like to catch up on e-mail. So I've created a "sat" label in Gmail. When an e-mail comes in that I want to push to the weekend I hit the sat label and then archive it. On Saturday I can just go to the sat label folder and crank through all those e-mails.

Only a week into doing this so I'm not sure how we it'll work but so far so good.

[nurikabe]

Originally Posted by jbischke

With Outlook I had a plug-in installed that allowed me to "snooze" messages. In other words, if I received an e-mail from a friend and wanted to reply to it on the weekend I could hit snooze for 3 days (say I got it on Wednesday) and it would go out of my Inbox and re-appear on Saturday. I LOVED this feature.

Ooh. I need that. What was the plugin? Know if it works with Outlook 2007?

[jbischke]

David Allen Company :: Software

[Patricia]

That would be a wonderful feature to have in GMail! I had never heard of that, not even of the plugin for Outlook, but it sure sounds like the perfect solution for the chaos my inbox on GMail is right now.

[newdad]

I use my google calendar as a tickler file and a "@send later" label. When I get a message that I need to reply to on a specific date I make a note "send email: to John Doe". When the day arrives I go to my @send later file and there's the email I need to reply to. I also placed my calendar on my desktop. Every morning at five am the calendar syncs with the desktop, so when I get on the computer I have my reminder waiting on the desktop.