Adrian Trenholm » Tickling email in Outlook

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One of the best things about David Allen’s Getting Things Done method is the “Tickle” file: a file numbered 1 to 31, in which you place material that you don’t want to deal with right now, but want to be reminded about later. Every day, you simply check the Tickle file to see what reminders you have placed there. So, today is 22 May, I check 22 in my Tickle file and add whatever I find there back into my inbox for today.

Great, but how do you tickle email, specifically in Outlook? I wanted to take email which I didn’t want to deal with straight away, remove it from my inbox, then have it automatically reappear in my inbox when I was ready to work on it. Having read Merlin Mann’s email diet, I hit on the idea of flagging the email, but leaving it in the inbox. Of course, David Allen suggests that you operate from an empty inbox, so I use Outlook’s grouping, sorting and filtering to make my inbox appear empty, even while it holds flagged items.

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Great, but how do you tickle email, specifically in Outlook? I wanted to take email which I didn’t want to deal with straight away, remove it from my inbox, then have it automatically reappear in my inbox when I was ready to work on it. Having read Merlin Mann’s email diet, I hit on the idea of flagging the email, but leaving it in the inbox. Of course, David Allen suggests that you operate from an empty inbox, so I use Outlook’s grouping, sorting and filtering to make my inbox appear empty, even while it holds flagged items.

To use this system, first set up your views. I use two views of my inbox, both of which contain the following columns: >

• Due By
• Follow Up Flag
• From
• Subject
• Received

To set up the new views, click View > Current View > Define Views… . Create (or copy and adapt) two new views, containing the fields I have listed. Name your new views “Inbox” and “Tickle.” You may also want to tick the box that says “Only show views created for this folder.”

Next you need to apply these settings to your new Inbox view:

• Group by: none
• Sort: Follow Up Flag (ascending)
• Filter: Click the Advanced tab, then add two rules, as follows
  1. Field: Due By
     Condition: does not exist
  2. Field: Due By
     Condition on or before
     Value today
• Other Settings: Allow in-cell editing (the first check box in the Rows grouping)

And for the Tickle view

• Group by: Due By (ascending)
• Sort: Received (descending)
• Filter: Off
• Other Settings: Allow in-cell editing

All incoming mail is visible in both views, but you spend most of your time in your Inbox view. To tickle mail from within the Inbox view, place the cursor in the Due By box and set a future date (tip: use the keyboard. > Outlook accepts “tomorrow” or even shorthand like “2d” for “in two day’s time” or “1w” for “in one week’s time”). Don’t hit Return just yet. Instead, hit tab and enter a next action under Follow Up Flag, then hit Return. Alternatively, in the email itself, you could have pressed Ctrl+Shft+G, then entered your reminder and tickle date.

Immediately, the flagged email “disappears,” filtered out of the Inbox view, until its due date, when it will “reappear” in the Inbox view as if it was a new mail. All your tickled mails remain in the Inbox file and you can see them all if you need them, grouped by their due dates in the Tickle view of your Inbox.

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