Got some things done in Apple Mail, Part I
A while ago I blogged my first attempt to set up
Since then, I have read the book (always a good idea!) and discovered the fabulous
kGTD is being improved at break-neck speed by the developer, Ethan Schoonover, who is pumping out new features and bugfixes almost daily with good humour and wit. Reading the RSS feed of comments by Ethan and other kGTD users is now a daily highlight.
Anyway, reading the book and using kGTD, I got some things done. Bugger me; it works!
I also did some thinking and tweaked my
One important lesson for me has been learning not to use my inbox as a lazy way of storing emails without making GTD-esque decisions about what to do with them. Emails can fester away in the Inbox for a long time before anything is done about them. You think because you have read them, you’ve dealt with them or somehow automatically will.
So I modified my set-up a little. The Next Actions Smart Mailbox (for next actions and for things that I am currently waiting on) and the Tickler Mailbox (for things that I have marked as “deferred”) are still there, but I added two more: an Unread Inbox and and an Unread Lists (for Mailing list posts — mostly grazing material, stuff I don’t have to do anything about).
I am learning not to look in my inbox at all. I don’t need to. Everything thing at comes into my Mail.app accounts turns up in one of the Unread mailboxes. All the work I need to do after processing the emails is contained in the Next Actions and Tickler mailboxes.
In fact, this system forces me to make a decision about each email when I first read it, because I know if I don’t tag it as something, it will fall out of the smart mailbox system and be lost for ever. (Unless I open up the Inbox and see it. But I’m not going to do that!)
Over the weekend, I’ll blog up how I tweaked my Mail Act-on and MailTags arrangement to make it work smarter for me.
I was highly skeptical of GTD when I first encountered it, as I tend to be about all Management-speak.
I’m not a true-believer yet, but I’d call myself a fellow-traveller. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and I am getting things done and feeling more relaxed. Sweet!
Tags: Apple Mail, applescripts, gtd, kgtd, mail.appRelated posts
November 19th, 2005 at 12:31 pm
Heya. I tend to run behind Apple in terms of what OS is the latest and greatest, and what OS I am running. Smart Mailboxes come with a version of Mail.app that is with 10.4.x, no? Please clarify that for those of us still hanging out in 10.3.x land. :-)
From She who has very many emails in her Inbox, oy vey, lordavmercy!
November 19th, 2005 at 12:39 pm
[...] I found HawkWings through Technorati; my email migration posts came onto Tim Gaden’s radar. I visited there, and found this post: Got some things done in Apple Mail, Part I, which is about customizing Apple Mail in order to help with the quick-processing of emails, ignoring the INbox and making decisions about them —being forced to make decisions about them, ahem— elsewhere through something called Smart Folders. [...]
November 19th, 2005 at 5:00 pm
Yes, sadly there are no smart mailboxes in Panther. One more reason to think about the upgrade ;-)
November 21st, 2005 at 12:06 am
[...] Learning to give up my Inbox and live in smart mailboxes instead was Part One. [...]
December 30th, 2005 at 8:37 pm
[...] Got some things done in Apple Mail, Part I Got some things done in Apple Mail, Part II AppleScript to create and run a GTD ?¢‚ǨÀúTickler file?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ GTD Tickler file: Another approach with MailTags [...]
December 31st, 2005 at 3:01 am
[...] Got some things done in Apple Mail, Part I and Part II. Blogging is often about being a magpie, picking shiny things out of the never-ending piles of other people’s posts. [...]
January 9th, 2006 at 12:40 am
[...] I think kGTD is excellent. I have blogged about using it and Mail.app to get organised and get things done here and here. Technorati Tags: kGTD, AppleScript, rule, OmniOutliner Pro that implements the “Getting Things Done” (, GTD, Mail.app [...]
January 20th, 2006 at 5:19 am
[...] I am new to the “Getting Things Done” craze (New Year’s resolution…), but I thought explaining my Thunderbird setup in the context of GTD would make a lot of sense. If you have no idea what I am talking about, you should check out this great introduction on 43Folders. My mail.app setup was very similar to the one outlined on Hawk Wings. So for me the question was: does Thunderbird allow for a similar setup? [...]
October 12th, 2006 at 7:01 am
[...] And here’s an article for using the GTD (Getting Things Done) menthodology with Apple Mail. I personally use the Apple Mail Tickler in my productivity life. [...]
January 20th, 2007 at 8:17 am
certainly looks as if GTD can work effectively on Mail just testing it out … hope to move across from gmail, where it works very well… couple of questions though, please remember I am a luddite!
Firstly When I set up Smart Mailbox Folders.. they are not recognised by preferences, so setting up rules is impossible.. very strange.
Secondly, I assume you archive by leaving all mail in the inbox?
… I realise this is a (very) old thread… but timely for me :-) thanks.
January 20th, 2007 at 9:42 am
David, I find that Mail.app is perfect for Getting Things done. I hope you find the same.
Smart mailboxes don’t really exist, that is to say, you can’t move an email into one. They are more like saved, living searches. Emails turn up in them because they match the criteria that you specify for the smart mailbox.
For example, you could create one to match every email with an “@Action” MailTags keyword. The rule you need you add the “@Action” keyword to an email. That email then automatically turns up in the smart mailbox. Does that explanation make sense?
To keep a clean inbox, or “bucket” as many GTDers like to say, I store my messages in an Archive folder. With Spotlight-enabled searches I don’t think it really matters. It’s just a cleanliness is next to “having got it all done” state of mind for me.
March 30th, 2007 at 10:35 am
Getting started with all of this and my pea-soup brain is starting to get it. Any chance of screenshotting exatly how your rules and smart mailboxes are set up?
-tim
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April 14th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
You didn’t say how you get messages dropped into the right Smart Folder.
Do you use Mail Actions?
June 25th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
[...] can’t wait for Joe’s next installment you can browse through past posts of mine (one, two, three) on getting things done with Mail Act-on and MailTags. Or read them now and see how [...]