Switched from flagged emails to a single notebook for tracking

I used to flag every email that needed a response, then I had about 200 flagged messages and couldn't tell what was urgent. Got so overwhelmed last Tuesday that I printed out the whole inbox and started writing action items on paper. Now I keep a small spiral notebook next to my keyboard and jot down one task per page as it comes in. It feels backward in 2024 but my response time actually got faster. Anybody else find that a physical list works better than digital tags?

4 comments

4 Comments

henryt183d ago

Honestly yeah, I tried the exact same thing last year and it actually helped.

alice_allen53d ago

@henryt18 you get it. Nothing like a $1.50 notebook fixing the same problem that expensive software couldn't solve.

julia_carter613d ago

One of my coworkers went through this exact thing with her wedding planning. She had some fancy project management app, the kind with all the bells and whistles and a monthly subscription fee, and she was still constantly losing track of vendor emails and deposit dates. Then her mom gave her a plain spiral notebook and a pack of colored pens for her birthday. She just started writing down everything in it, contacts, timelines, budgets, all on paper. She told me last week she's never been more organized and she actually feels less stressed now, which is wild because she was about to lose her mind before. Sometimes the simplest solution is the one that actually works.

abbyp613d ago

if she charges clients by the hour, she is basically paying them to procrastinate. wait... did your coworker actually pay for that app AND still have to use a notebook her mom gave her? thats kind of hilarious tbh. i mean, you really cant beat the price of a spiral and some pens. it almost makes you wonder why anyone bothers with all that complicated stuff in the first place.