Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Waiting on things—all sorts of things!
There’s always a task—or a decision, or an email, etc.—that we’re waiting on. We can’t do it now. But then when do we get to it?
This week’s tip from kathryn.robinson covers all the bases: keeping track of everything all over the proverbial map, deferring anything you can’t do yet, and deciding when you can.
I’m often waiting for things that are outside of my control that I want to remember to follow up on at some point in the future. I use RTM in different ways to track these items and ensure that I follow up. In my case, I prefer to follow up weekly but YMMV. I am careful to have only 1 reminder for any single thing, but these are in different places and I prefer to keep them separate - emails, physical items, and RTM tasks. I also have separate reminders for each of these 3 types because I can do them at different times and/or places.
For emails, I have a Waiting folder in my Gmail account that I breeze through. I have a reoccurring RTM task to remind me to review that folder each week. Items in this Waiting folder include emails I sent to clients where I need a response and items I’ve ordered but not yet received.
Some triggers that help me track items I am waiting on are physical in nature. Examples include a UPS receipt for a package I mailed that I need to make sure has arrived, gift cards that I want to use at some point in the future, and a quote from a painter that will get us on their summer schedule. I have a reoccurring RTM task to remind me to look through the items in this folder each week on Monday.
For RTM tasks that I need to wait on, I have a “waiting” tag that is used to populate a “Waiting” Smart List. A reoccurring RTM task reminds me to review this list and I choose to do this every Monday morning as I start my work day.
Some examples of things that make it on this list:
• a reminder to buy a new outdoor table set (waiting for the husband to agree on the timing of this)
• an annual task to put out the hummingbird feeder - it will sit here until I spot the first hummer; I record the annual arrival date in a Note in the task
• client-related tasks for my small business that cannot yet be done for (waiting for a physical item to be dropped off, requires a meeting that has not yet been scheduled, etc).
Thanks for sharing this tip, kathryn.robinson! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.
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