Create A Mail Rule To Track Sent Messages


It’s pretty frustrating when you email someone about something, they forget to respond, and by the time you remember you wanted to follow up with them, the original message is buried in your sent items folder. Instead of wasting time digging through it to find the original email, this suggestion from GTD Times gives you a folder full of your must-follow-up on messages that you can review easily.

GTD Times’ walkthrough is for Microsoft Outlook, but the same idea applies with Gmail or any other mail client. You configure a mail rule or filter to send messages that you’ve CC’d or BCC’d yourself on to a specific folder (in Gmail, you can give it a specific label, and use the “deliveredto:” operator — shown above — to filter based on the BCC field) with a name like “Waiting for Response” or “Follow Up Later”, or in the GTD framework, “Waiting for Support”. You’ll have to remember that every time you send a note you expect a response on — or that you send to someone with a history of not responding to your emails — you’ll have to BCC yourself, but as soon as the note lands in your inbox again, it’s filtered and filed away. Then you can always check in on your special filter or folder to see what you’re waiting on others to get back to you on.

It’s a one-time trick that can save you time later when you know you emailed someone asking for something but just can’t seem to find the original message you sent. Do you do something similar, or have a different way of tracking emails that need responses? Share your productivity tips in the comments below.

Cool GTD tip for tracking Waiting For items in Outlook [GTD Times]


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