“Raise the scarlet standard high
Beneath its folds we’ll live and die
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer
We’ll keep the red flag flying here.”
~ The Red Flag
If Karl Marx had celebrated his recent 200th birthday with a trip back here to Manchester, where he studied the lives of the working classes in the 1840s, he might be forgiven for thinking that Communism had been a big hit after all. Why? Well, if he’d peered over the shoulders of modern-day working people at their laptop screens, it’s likely that he’d see a sea of red flags waving back at him. From their inboxes.
Flags are a common device for highlighting emails that have to be remembered, tracked or actioned. Similar tools are found in most email clients – starred items in Google Mail, for example – but red ‘follow up’ flags will be familiar to most people because of the dominance of Microsoft Outlook in the corporate marketplace.
As a GTD® trainer, the backlog of flagged emails is one of the most predictable sights in an Outlook implementation workshop. The conversation that then unfolds in those moments goes something like this;
Client: “What do I do with all of these?”
Me: “Do you still need them?”
Client: “No, they’re ancient.”
When you’ve heard this for the Nth time, you don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to draw an obvious conclusion – red flags don’t work for most people. (The ‘N’ here also stands for ‘Numb’, which is the relationship that people tend to have with their collection of flags.) Flags are faithfully applied, with the best of intentions, but just doesn’t seem to work in reality.
The problem here is that flags simply don’t go far enough. What’s usually taking place when they’re applied is only part of what we do in GTD when we clarify new inputs. Half the process gets done – reading the email, deciding it’s actionable and flagging it so that it is separated from the non-actionable ones – but then… nothing else.
What’s missing is the final decision about what needs to happen, or the ‘next action thinking’ as we call it here at… er… Next Action Associates. It’s such a simple thing to do, but not doing eventually leads to that numbing and neglected backlog of flagged emails and the cloud of guilt that often accompanies it.
What’s more, not finishing the thinking encourages continuing the thinking, sometimes long after the day is done, because it leaves open loops in your mind. Another familiar workshop sight is a full set of hands going up when you ask, “Hands up if you consistently think about work at home”. Marx might marvel at the machines that have replaced the spinning jenny and cotton gin, but dominance of work over life would be much more familiar to him. In 1845, a 14-16 hour working day was common, and when your inbox is out of control it’s entirely possible that your brain’s working just as long as that. In 2019, your body doesn’t need to be at work for your mind to be there.
The creation of flags came from a good place (and I don’t mean Seattle). It comes from the well-meaning desire to give email users a helping hand to climb out of the black hole of their inbox, and, to an extent, they do. Having a manageable number of red-flagged actionable items is better than having to scroll up and down your inbox every time you need to decide what to do next. However, not finishing the thinking on those actionable emails tends to mean an inevitable slide towards an inbox that’s so full of red flags it’s like a May Day parade in Moscow.
So my message to you, Comrades, is that if you have a mass of red flags on your screen creating white noise in your head, the solution is to finish the thinking. Clarify the emails so that you’re looking at stuff that’s more helpful.
Or, as Marx might have put it, “Workers of the world, REWRITE!”
Brilliant take-away for me — this says it all, what happens when we delay decisions and actions….
“not finishing the thinking encourages continuing the thinking…because it leaves open loops in your mind.”
This is it exactly! We need to see that connection between not finishing the thinking and the consequences of that. Sometimes we need a bit of space to decide so we’re not making a rash choice…but leaving it open-ended indefinitely doesn’t work, either. Love this. Thank you!
Thanks, Tamara.
Thank you for this.
I think most people do think about what the ‘next action’ is when flagging an email for later attention. However several spanners fly around to frustrate achieving those actions:
1) no place to quickly document the next step (I often email myself the next action, stuffocating my inbox even more!);
2) no time to think/document the action because of the ratio of ‘meetings and other work’ to ‘email time’;
3) and finally, the item sealing failure to revisit the red flags: a tonne of new emails arriving faster than can be processed (due to aforementioned meetings and non-email work) and sedimenting on top of existing ones.
If you were able to advise regarding dealing with these challenges, and assume that some of us do know the next action but have no time to execute it, such blogs would be very helpful indeed.
I am actually a big user of red flags but in the following manner:
1. Whenever I open an email that entered my inbox, I apply the 2 min rule. If there is a Next Action required, I edit the email (for example in Outlook using the Actions/Edit message function) and write my next action at the top of the email (message body) between square brackets, in italics and highlighted in yellow (i.e. identifying signs to make sure I am seeing that part and will remove it if re-using/reply to/forwarding the email at a later stage).
2. If the action should be anytime/asap, the email goes into an @Action folder (which is where I find all emails that require an “anytime” action)
3. If the action is for later, I flag the email to the moment I want to be reminded of that next action and it goes into a @PENDING folder
Every morning my first step is to go to the @PENDING folder and move red emails into @Action or making a willful decision to reflag them for alter. Throughout the day I focus on my @Action folder to move forward with my work in relation to received emails.
The Weekly Review is the opportunity to do some cleanup as well, but with the above process I have the constant reassurance that the emails that cannot wait for a weekly review are reminded to me in time.
I realize this may not be fully GTD-proof, but it has worked for me to keep an empty Inbox with very manageable @Action and @Pending folders and a relaxed approach to email management. While the above process description may seem long, it is actually a very fast process, with the important merit that Next Actions are thought through and spelled out in writing to prevent the need to rethink the matter a second time.
Good stuff, Christian. Thanks for the input.
Seems like a pretty GTD-compliant approach to me – you’re consciously clarifying your emails, deciding and documenting the next action, and parking it in a place that’s clear to you.
I think the reason that red flags don’t tend to work for most people isn’t that it can’t be made to work, it’s that it’s not obvious or easy, people don’t get taught this stuff, and also, as Helen points out, most people are working under such pressure that something which isn’t quick and slick is hard to sustain.
Miles
Hi Helen,
Certainly a challenging environment you’ve got. There are a number of levels to this, and some will be harder to influence than others, but getting a toolset that’s going to enable you to capture the actions from emails without the current friction is going to be most directly helpful thing you can change. As well as the suggestions from Christian, we also have various system guides. Do get in touch to arrange a chat if it would be helpful to talk it through.
Miles
Thanks Christian. Those look like good suggestions to try out.
In the quotation that opens the piece, there is a misspelling.
I struggle with how to convert an email to a task and still have a way to get back to the email for answering or filing it. I use Gmail, and the Tasks feature is an option, but that’s not where I want to keep a permanent next actions list.
Hi George,
Thanks for this. There are different ways to make the connection you want between the original email and the reminder in your system depending on which tool you use, but since you’re talking Gmail then you might want to take advantage of the fact that every email in Gmail has a unique URL. As a result, you can copy and paste it into your list manager and it will jump you directly back to the email when it’s time to execute the task.
I use this strategy for managing tasks arising in my personal email (Gmail) but tracking them in one place along with everything else in my list manager (Outlook).
Hope this helps.
Miles