Ever since our inception, a steady stream of users have enquired about the difference between a Next Action and an Action.
I think it’s finally time to figure this out and find the optimal process.
The Current Workflow
As a quick reminder about where we are right now. There are 5 standard Status labels: Next Action, Action, Waiting On, Some Day and Finished.
The core workflow is, if an email can be done in under 2 minutes, do it and Finish it. If you’re waiting for a response, set it to Waiting On. Otherwise it’s an Action. And, if it’s the highest priority thing in a project, it’s a Next Action.
The Tedious Part of the Workflow
The problem with this is, I don’t care about S/Action. To me, everything that isn’t “Finished” is an action.
The other Statuses are useful modifiers. Next Action is high priority, and Waiting On is delegated/awaiting-response.
But the hassle involved in setting each important email to S/Action is too great to make me do it 100% of the time. I’m lazy and GTDInbox doesn’t support me, and therefore there are now holes in my system (email that isn’t categorized).
A Major Technical Limitation for any New Solution
The rub – the reason we cannot just replace the Action label with something more lightweight (like “-label:s-finished”) – is sadly entirely technical. When people first install GTDInbox, in all likelihood, they have 1000s of emails in their inbox, none of which have the S/Finished label. To be quick, and to know how many emails there are within each Status, GTDInbox downloads all Statuses. Therefore, for new users, if there was no S/Action label, the search for Actions would be “-label:s-finished”; which means GTDInbox would have to download 1000s of emails to maintain its current functionality. That is simply not feasible.
Possible Solutions for a Better Way to Action Emails
One solution is to make S/Action irrelevant (and for Actions to be “-label:S-Finished”) and overcome the technical limitation by creating an Install tool. So when you install GTDInbox for the first time, it would process the inbox and archive all emails, and add S/Finished to them. (Arguably, whatever we do, this would be a useful tool). The weakness with this is that a) it would be slow, b) the user might skip it, and we’d still be left with 1000s of emails to download. I’d have no confidence in this solution.
Another solution is to fully automate the addition of S/Action to all newly arrived emails with a Filter. This achieves the desired result: every new email is an Action until it is Finished. However, it may quickly become unwieldy as all spam, all mailing lists and everything else would be given the S/Action label. The solution here is for the user to tweak the filter to exclude mailing list messages. Perhaps a more serious problem is that the filter will also apply S/Action to all replies. So, if you had changed a conversation to S/Waiting On, and you get a reply, it’s automatically changed to S/Action. Which may be fine for some people, but I believe it’s a problem as I like to manually decide whether I’m no longer Waiting On a response (i.e. the response may be insufficient, or a simple acknowledgement that they will do it in the future). It’s an even bigger problem for S/Next, where a high priority email will be returned to normal priority as soon as a reply comes in. So sadly, we have to rule the Filter option out.
If you’re wondering what would happen if we restructured GTDInbox so that it does not need to download all Actions… well it would result in a serious drop in functionality and efficiency. GTDInbox would no longer know which Projects (and Contexts) have actions. So, you would not be able to scan your Project labels to see which ones need your attention.
As the root of the problem is the hassle involved with adding the S/Action label, we could semi-automate this. For instance, as soon as you view a conversation (which you would not do for an uninteresting mailing list item), it is automatically given the S/Action label. (This would be a preference). Using the “Send And” button of Plus, your newly Actioned email could be Finished as soon as you reply. My only concern here is that you might feel that GTDInbox is oppressing you – a Pavlovian response that makes you fear opening an email because it’ll become an Action – a burden! I hope this wouldn’t be such a big problem with a prominent “Finished” button. We could also make it so that when you remove the S/Action label (in the Gmail conversation header) GTDInbox automatically adds the Finished label — another way to complete a conversation. (We could even revisit the Filter idea, by watching emails that arrive in the inbox ourselves, and adding an S/Action immediately if it has no other Status – but this takes us back to automatically Actioning mailing list items and other unimportant email, so it’s not desirable). Another (more manual) alternative is a new button that would “Action, Archive and Move Next” – although this isn’t watertight so we’d still be prone to forget.
Summary – and your thoughts?
I believe I’ve covered (perhaps a little too exhaustively 
) all the possible solutions. To me, some solution built around the last option (i.e. automate adding S/Action) is the most desirable.
If you’ve managed to stick this blog post through the end, then, well, congratulations 
Your thoughts about the most how best to Action emails (and your own workflow) would be most welcome in the comments.
i never use finish.
My workflow is a little bit different from the author.
Not all emails to me is action.
Most emails, indeed, is nothing but information.
If its disposable, i just delete, if not i categorize and achive.
No action required, no finished either.
I miss a calendar status with a date or, better, a google calendar association (the status alone i already created)
An actionable email could be an action, or, if i want to prioritize it , a next action.
When the task is done (or the delegation is finished, or anything else that you could think as finished) i just take away the label. and then, it is not an action anymore, no need for finish again.
So as i said, i never used the finished label and it’s ok for me.
PS1. i would hate an automatic feature making all my “you-have-to-know-something” emails an action.
PS2. I love GTDINBOX.
(NOTE: most of this post is just background or rational, you can safely skip to the last paragraph for the important part)
I have to disagree with the first poster, zalkind, in that every email that comes into the Inbox is an Action — you have to open it and read it, then decide how to categorize it, archive it or delete it, THAT is an action. More on this in a minute . . .
When I first started using GTDInbox a little over two years ago, there was no ‘Next Action’ label. Instead, Next Actions were indicated by use of the Star. I found this to be very convenient and intuitive — the star is easy to add and remove (even from the Inbox), it is very visible, and, in keeping with the point of the star in the first place, it readily indicates the important nature of the email or it’s contents.
To me, both ‘Action’ and ‘Next Action’ have an important and distinct purpose. ‘Actions’ are anything I can do right now *or* any time in the future — they need to be done, I am not ‘waiting on’ anything for their completion, but they are not imperative. ‘Next Actions,’ on the other hand, I need to complete ASAP.
So every email, from the time it arrives until the time it is deleted/archived, is an action, by nature of the fact that *something* needs to be done to it and that something requires me to act upon it. I agree that forcing the Action label onto every new email would be a problem, because that would remove any previously applied Status (Next, Waiting on, etc). However, Gmail ALREADY provides a built-in Action status — when an email arrives, it is placed at the top of the Inbox, and it is highlighted. It’s placement and it’s new-message highlighting tell me that an Action is required (I need to at least open it and read it).
Personally, I would like to do away with both the ‘Action’ and ‘Next Action’ statuses. Instead, GTDInbox would FORCE new-message highlighting for every email that is not Trash, Spam or Finished. Next Actions can be Starred. Clicking Finished will remove the Star (as GTDInbox used to behave) and/or new-message highlighting and auto-archive the finished message. In other words, even if you open an email, read it, and return to the Inbox, the message will appear UNREAD, which is an easy to see indication that an Action is still required, without having to scan the labels, which can get crowded, for what type of action it is.
I’m hugely digging this. Both the idea of a faded out Finished items (rows); and the return of Star as Next Action.
I’m not sure I agree with your initial assertion “To me, everything that isn’t “Finished” is an action.”. I know many people who use their inbox as their archive, and use Stars for action items. Personally, if I got back from vacation with 200 emails in my inbox, installed GTDInbox, I would not expect those 200 emails to be Actions. They are in an unknown state, and need to be triaged. That’s where the new Plus feature of Archive, Delete, Finish, Spam and Move is so beneficial. GTD drives me to a zero inbox, but I have to make that decision. I don’t think we can programmatically do it.
I think the distinction between action and next action is unnecessary. I also just archive/ delete/forward some emails without necessarily actioning, or finishing
so what shows up in todo are only those items that need action, if it is dependent on some other action it goes in the waiting on folder / or project folder I would think
I agree with the other commenters. The Inbox is just that – the inbox. We decide whether an email is worth adding an Action / Next Action (or other) tag to – I like the ‘Triage’ anagogy above.
Many emails I get, while of vague interest, can be Archived after a quick read, or even straight from the preview in the Inbox – in bulk if necessary
I think you’re just overanalysing – frankly, the way it works now is just fine, thank you very much.,
For me, a NA is a clearly-defined action, either stand-alone, or the next step of a project to move it towards completion. An Action is usually a bit more vague, and needs more thought to convert it to an NA, or generate one (maybe in my separate Task tool RTD).
This is all useful, especially hearing your individual workflows and outlook…
It doesn’t make sense to make all emails actions. Some emails are references, and others just need to be discarded. It doesn’t make sense to distinguish between Action and Next Action, either. What’s the point? That just gets more confusing.
The inbox should be treated just like GTD’s ideal inbox: you collect there, then you process it. Processing it includes deciding whether or not it is an action, deferring it, delegating it, etc.
Also, and this is slightly off topic. But often times after I’m done with the action I want to keep the email as a reference, but it’s unwieldy to do this when the email is already assigned a project label (I’d get so many duplicate labels from P/ to R/ that it wouldn’t work), so I created a new status: reference. The only downside is that GTDInbox counts my S/Reference emails as tasks in the todo summary.
I never used Finished, I only use next, action and waiting, and the project tags.
Most mail I get is resolved in 2 minutes, others are anoucements o personal things that only share photos or some info.
I remeber once I used finished, but did’nt like it what it did. Din’dt try later. I was always wondering whats the perfect use of that. Never have time to learn it.
@pablo doesnt clicking finish and next , in one stroke, remove the action or waiting label as the case may be and move to the next task in one click? I am using the plus version, so it is very helpful. I realised that , the magnifyling lens doesnt have an option for waiting on label.
I use Action and Finished.
Since the beginning I set up a filter to add S/Action to all inbound mail. This hasn’t proven unwieldy or a hassle at all. (I also add a label for the year ie. 2010, it helps to break down contract correspondence by year for me)
At that point it sits in my Inbox, till it is Finished. (I know this isn’t the Inbox Zero way, but at least for me It still forces me to work towards Zero, but my Inbox shows all outstanding tasks.) Unread messages get read, and a company name label for each company it affects gets added (or personal reference if it’s personal), along with a label for the project name if they are big enough to have multiple projects. If it can be done under 5 min, I label it next-action, and do it… If not it stays,
I use S/waiting on after sending emails with questions….This is the one tricky part because gmail has no sane/simple way of getting a email you send to be placed in the inbox, they insist on starting it in sent, without a inbox label. Anyone who knows how to fix that pls tell me.
Once something is done, I label finished, and archive it.
I’ve also setup a couple of google quick links (stored searches) to hunt down and find any mails that occasionally slip through and get archived without a finished tag. This gives me a way to audit that everything in the inbox is really all I have to do.
My Inbox floats between 20-30 unfinished items at any given time, not bad considering I get on average 70-80 emails a day.
Hi, I am not looking at WAITING ON-eMails everyday. I just look at them before a meeting. I recall the mails by using the sidebar – I don’t want them in my inbox. Pls. also see my other coment where I describe how I use WAITING ON in conjunction with “S/Get Status” which I defined by myself.
Cheers
Thomas
I am not unhappy with present protocol.
My interpretation of s/next action = URGENT ( could also be done with stars )
In my approach everything has to have a status tag – ultimately s/finished (one ongoing minor frustration is the ability to filter for items with no status tag as a house keeping tactic ) This ensures that I have in fact processed everything. I use filters to apply project or reference labels but not status.
I use the keyboard shortcuts extensively , so buttons are can actually get counter-productive , but I understand the need for the average navigator
I would be a bit leary of an arbitrary automation.
If I understand what you’re saying, I’m not crazy about the idea of automation. When I first starting using GTDInbox I remember being confused by the difference between Action and Next Action, but we can edit the labels, so that’s what I did. I renamed the labels so they fit better with my particular work flow. I created appropriate filters as well. If there was an update that changed what I’ve set up by applying a particular label to everything I’ve already labeled, I’d probably be pretty miffed. It seems better to let people set up their own “automation”by way of filters.
For me, the difficulty is (like many others) that so much stuff is coming in that I want to be informed by, but not necessarily do something about. Sipping from the proverbial garden hose. I want items to be available to me later, so if I recall having seen something that in a new context might be useful, I can retrieve it.
I’m wondering if an organizing trick that I heard long ago might be helpful- using time to determine what’s truly useful and what isn’t. The way this was described- as a means of handling physical clutter- was to put things in a box (or to tag them) so that if they WEREN’T USED within a period of time- a month or a year- they’d be sheduled for ‘deletion’ (donation to Salvation Army or equivalent).
I’m thinking that it might be useful to have a parameter, “t”, that I could set- for instance- set to 24 hours, or 7 days, or whatnot, that would be a temporary ’sandbox’ for things that I’d seen but have not decided to assign an “Action” or “Next Action” or other status. Or possibly a series of “t” parameters that I could set up to be assigned in orders of decreasing recency. Once I’d glanced at something- unless I took another explicit action- it would go into the default “suspense for t” vault where it would be readily available, and then to archive (along with all of the other unsorted, unneeded ’stuff’).
This would allow me to do what I do best- which is to browse- and NOT tax me with DECIDING on a STATUS for more than I feel ready to take on at the moment- the challenge is that, frequently, RIGHT NOW, I’m not completely sure that something should be assigned to the oblivion of ARCHIVE… but it may well turn out that in a day, or a week, or a month, that I’m fine about letting it drop into that undistinguished tank…
So- Just a thought- Would others appreciate the opportunity for autolabelling of otherwise unassigned viewed items to a time-oriented category?
Thanks-
Ed
You may just label it S/SomeDay. What I did is create 3 contexts for TIME: C/Next-Week C/Next-Month C/Next-Semester. So if something comes that I am not sure what to do with it (what’s its status, or it is an action but shouldn’t be done until next-month I simply tag it C/Next-Month). Then each Monday, 1st of the month and 1st of July I review the corresponding context tag.
It is, in a sense, organized procrastination
.
Ed,
I’m intrigued by this.
We will be adding Clean-Up/Saved searches to Plus sometime soon, with ‘relative’ search operators, like ‘7.daysago’. So, you could have a standby status, such as S/Sandboxed (or as Gamelux suggests, just use S/Some Day) and have a Clean-Up search of “S/Sandboxed before:7.daysago”. This would show you all items you’d deferred for processing that are over a week old.
Possibly another suggestion-
Might it be possible to have a button that would allow me to tag a particular message source as “Vendor” so that all FUTURE messages from this source would also be auto-tagged as “Vendor”?
Perhaps another button might be “Subscription”… once so-tagged, these items could remain in the “t” file for the designated period, and then drop themselves into “Archive”… Would this be helpful for entire series of repetitive emails we all deal with?
Thanks-
Ed
In the sidebar there is a section “About” there you find preferences.
Goto “category labels” and define a category.
I defined “Q/” for the german word “Quelle” which means ’source’ because “S/” is already used by Status Labels. When done you have a new category of labels which you can assign to the incoming mail by a filter.
Cheers
Thomas
With the Vendor example, have you considered the user of a contact or group (for the company)? Rather than tagging each email, just search for S/Action labels associated with that Contact. I’m keen to make this more doable in the GTDInbox UI.
Hi you wanted to know how I handle “Action”?
To understand how I use it, I think it’s best, if I tell you how I handle all of the status labels:
I associate ACTION with ASAP i.e. everything that cannot be done within two minutes but I think it should be done as soon as possible. ASAP to me does not mean immediately but I try to do it today.
I set the mail to NEXT, when I do not think it needs to be done ASAP but after my ACTIONS are done. I try to work on NEXT till the end of the the week. On Thursday I scan NEXT additionally, in case I judged wrong.
I use SOME DAY very rarely e.g. if the mail is somehow inspiring to do additional work, but there is no due date I can identify in it. Most of the cases I prefer a context label e.g. “C/Knowledge” and press FINISH.
WAITING ON to me is much more tricky than ACTION or NEXT because waiting too long can be my fault. So I defined “S/Get Status”. This label is set by a filter that I run manually. Running filters is currently the only way to set two status to one single mail. I do not want to use a non-status-label because I want the comfort of the “radio button function” when clicking on one of the status buttons which unsets (all) other status labels. The Get-Status-Filter needs to be run manually because this is the only way to run a filter on existing mail (I wish I could write a cron job for this).
I think it’s time for an example:
Let’s say today is Monday 2010-03-01 (March 1st) and I want to set the label “S/Get Status” to all “S/Waiting on” AND “older than one week” (roughly=Feb. 20th) as I always do on Mondays.
So I edit my existing Filter to:
With these words: label:s-waiting-on before:2010/2/20
I click “next step” and make sure that label “S/Get Status” is chosen.
Next I set a mark to checkbox “apply to old mail” and finally click on “update” filter.
This way I have some mails with both “S/Waiting on” AND “S/Get Status”.
Some of them I know are done so I click FINISH and get rid of both labels “S/Waiting on” and “S/Get Status”. If I want to wait longer I click twice on WAITING ON (the first removes WAITING ON and the second click sets WAITING ON and removes GET STATUS). All others I need to ask for the status by phone or in the status meeting which is on Tuesdays in my case. The two status labels on that mail even remain if I decide to ask for the status by replying or forwarding this mail.
Although running my filter regularly is easy I wish I could run it automatically and with a dynamic date definition like “before:10 days”
My next topic suggestion is “How do you handle WAINTING ON?”
Cheers and Thanks for your inspirations
Thomas
We definitely should delve into How to Handle Waiting On later… but for now…
I agree there is a responsibility (maybe even it’s just the point) with Waiting On to check up and monitor progress.
With upcoming features, I want to be able to drill into Waiting On with some preset searches. So you can say “give me S/Waiting On items that are over a week old”. Or, “Give me S/Waiting On items for important contacts/groups”.
Also, you’ll be able to deadline specific Waiting On emails (Today, Tomorrow, in X days, etc.); which will interrupt you to remind you to check them (rather than you remembering to run your safety net).
how is the chrome port coming?
It is a false assumption to assume that emails are actions. Emails can be references, spam, or less-than-2-minute actions (as most email is). The last category, even if you respond, isn’t really an action in my eyes. After all, whats the point of elevating an email to the status of action, resolving it immidiately, and reducing it to a finished action. Why not just respond and move on? There’s no point in the labels for most emails.
Anything labeled Action (or SomeDay, Next, WatingOn) is something important. It is not merely an email, but an Action, worthy of my time to label, catergorize, prioritize, and at sometime accomplish.
I love the NextAction status. Its the only way that priorities can be set.
My dream feature would be to connect dependencies among tasks, as you can in a nested tree to-do list. its not possible for emails, but I dream. This is one way to set priorities.
I am a little confused by your mail but I try to answer on what I understood:
You want nested or better nestable mails.
This is a point or dream that should not be very far by using Category Labels.
I think all we need is Sub-Category labels like “P/myProject/myDeliverable/myWorkpackage”
You say emails are no actions.
Correct. I read “emails are [...] tasks”.
These tasks may be tasks for someone else (a) or (b) for me or (c) for nobody (at least not yet)
a) you forward it and mark it WAITING ON
b) you decide how urgent it is an use ACTION or NEXT or SOME DAY
c) this may be one of the interesting cases! Sometimes it’s good to figure out why this mail has been sent to us. Does someone want to watch an issue? What are his or her expectations?
It’s important to destinguish between “Status Labels” and “Category Labels”.
Use Status Labels to document who’s turn it is and set a priority if it’s your own turn.
Use Category Labels to structure the tasks e.g. deliverable-oriented and/or stakeholder-oriented and/or …
Cheers Thomas
Me again:
I tried sub-categories to build a tree.
I defined
P/Test
P/Test/One
P/Test/Two
Setting one of these labels works fine!!
But when I put a single lable
P/Test/One
to a mail it is not listed when searching for
label:p-test
Dear GTDInbox-Developers please make the search for
label:p-test
to show
label:p-test-*
additionally and/or allow wildcards in label search so that there is a workaround possible
Cheers
Thomas
Hi Thomas,
Funnily enough, I started thinking exactly the same thing, right down to the syntax (P/Test/*) earlier this week! I definitely like the idea. Will look to get it included soon,
Andy
I would definitely pay $$$ for that!
The filter I can’t do but would like to is something like this:
Show me all emails labeled with S/Action, for which its project (its label J/…) has no emails labeled S/NextAction (for me NextAction is strictly GTD, it is the action that pushes forward a project, all others are sub-goals of the project). So what I want is a quick way to review all actions of projects that has no next action, i.e., which project should be moved forward?
Would something like this would ever be possible in GTDInbox?
Sorry, but trees work fine IF and only IF you refresh your browser after defining new labels.
So if I put a label “P/Test/One” to a mail there are two labels attached to the mail “P/Test” and “P/Test/One”.
Thus this mail is found by search if I search for “label:p-test-one” and is found also when I search less specifically “label:p-test”
That’s wanderfull!
Cheers
Tomas, I couldn’t get the sub-labels to work. I have a label J/ASAI2009/AEPIA, and an email labeled with it. I tried the search label:j-asai2009 and it didn’t find the email. Any help (email me to facundobromberg@gmail, it would be great to get this working!)
Hi Mike,
Wrt “My dream feature would be to connect dependencies among tasks, as you can in a nested tree to-do list. its not possible for emails, but I dream. This is one way to set priorities.”… I’d love to hear more about how you’d like to use this for emails. Some examples of real use cases would be great.
Feel free to drop me an email about this – andym@gtdinbox.com.
Case use for me: Trigger an email as next-action when some other action is done. I see the whole set of actions as partitioned in contexts, of which I see 3 types: spatial, temporal, and conditional. The spatial are those that GTD tells us about (e.g., errands, office, home), temporal I have three (next-week, next-month, next-semester) so I only see the actions labeled next-week when we are actually at the next week (something like a simplification of 43 folders into only 3 folders), and finally the conditional actions: I would like that some actions pops up in my next-action list whenever some other action is finished (e.g., contact the pharmacy once the physician sent me the prescription).
Mike,
One thing I’ve been considering is the ability to pipeline labels. Suppose you’re dealing with the press. When you first contact them, you might give it the label ‘P/PR/3.0Launch/Contacted’. As the conversation progresses, you might want to move it through stages, such as P/PR/3.0Launch/Interested and then P/PR/3.0Launch/Published.
I’m not yet sure whether we need a special UI in GTDInbox to facilitate this. It could follow the Status label model, and only allow one label to be active at once. And suggest the next/previous stage of the pipeline for quick transitions.
I never use “Finished” and I have renamed “Action” to “Tomorrow”, used in in conjunction with labels such as “Next week”, etc…
In short, I’d like to press the value of being able to use GTDinbox to sort out your mail in the way you are most comfortable with… Please be careful about adding automatic functions that might work badly with custom labels/workflows…
So it seems like the best use of the action/ nextaction buttons is to rename one of them to whatever fits your workflow. I currently dont use next action, use action exclusively
Andy, could you please elaborate on what you mean by “download all Actions”? To where is GTDInbox downloading Actions? Is it to my local PC or to a central server somewhere?
Hi Corey,
It just means the email text is pre-fetched into your browser so that GTDInbox can show them (from Gmail).
E.g. when you use the Preview popup.
Nothing is saved anywhere, and we certainly don’t see your emails. (it’s the same way Gmail works – it just downloads data as needed in order to display emails).
Andy
Everyone – thank you for the very helpful responses. It’s clear that the best thing we can do here is keep flexibility at a maxium, and let people customize around their own workflows.
Oh, yes… I would really *love* to be able to attach “timers” to emails and/or statuses… E.g., to make all mails marked as “Next Week” pop up (or made into Actions, or similar) each Monday, etc…
Let me second Daniel’s suggestion that we’d appreciate functionality that could alter status of items with time.
This could work two ways-
EXPIRING STATUS- There are some items that we know will no longer be important to us after a certain date- it would be great to have a way they could automatically ‘expire’ and delete or bury themselves. Do we really need all of those BORDERS REWARDS COUPONS we get every week- we don’t know if we’re going to BORDERS when we get them so we don’t throw them out, but we know for sure we won’t want them a week later when they’ve expired…
TICKLER STATUS- There are also items that we know we can’t do anything about- either in addressing ACTIONS or in REVIEWS- until after a certain date. For example- in my work I am responsible for reviewing supervision documentation for staff I work with every six months. It does me NO GOOD to review this issue every week- 25 pointless reviews of this item before I would see it at the right time to do something about it. Leaving it in “WAITING FOR” status is not a good idea because what happens if my colleagues forget to provide me with their semiannual report?
In the world of paper and objects we would address this with a “Tickler List”-
I suggest that these two time-associated functions would be a worthwhile addition to GTDInbox functionality.
Thanks-
Ed
If you are experiencing a problem where GTDINBOX will not load, please add your name to the list over in the user forum area http://bit.ly/cUOAjw. Hopefully someone will respond if we get enough people shouting loud enough.