My setup of GTD in Apple Mail.app
Repost of an article from a former blog.
To start, I’ve installed MailTags and Mail Act-on, both of which are available at indev software. The software titles, which extend Apple Mail’s feature set, are pretty self-explanatory, but see the developer’s page for more info. I’m just going to plow straight through to my setup.
In Mail.app, I’ve created three folders for my e-mail triage. They are Do, Defer and Respond.
I’m using Mail Act-on to quickly move e-mail from my inbox to the appropriate folder while avoiding the tedium of drag-and-drop. For me, hitting Esc-D (for Do it) moves a file to the Do folder and marks it as unread so I know it’s there. Similar key shortcuts are Esc-L (Later) sends e-mail to the Defer folder and, you guessed it, Esc-R means I need to respond.
Those options, along with the delete key, will help me manage my inbox in lickety-split fashion.
As for MailTags? I’m still getting my head around that piece. It’s got a lot of options and I’m trying to figure out how best to work it into my workflow.
I subscribe to several mailing lists, but those are all filtered to folders for reading later when I have time. They are all low priority so I don’t need them in my face all the time.
Great post I’m going to try it!