Is this an evil cross post? I put this on Chris' blog comments: I use a bit of a hodge podge of rules and systems, too. When an email comes in I apply the "2 m

Is this an evil cross post? I put this on Chris' blog comments: I use a bit of a hodge podge of rules and systems, too. When an email comes in I apply the "2 minute rule". If it's 2 minutes or less to reply or do whatever needs to be done, it gets done right away. Any longer than that and I reply to the person who sent it and BCC in my Highrise dropbox and "task" dropbox - that way a task gets added (I usually have to modify the subject line of the email so that the task looks right in Highrise) and I also have reference to the entire email through highrise in the search. When I reply, I tell the person when I will get to it, and that determines the task dropbox I use in Highrise - ie. if I'm going to get to it today, I BCC my "today" dropbox, if I'm going to get to it tomorrow, this week or next week etc. If the task has a specific time and date I either add it in Highrise or if I'm on the move, I add it as a TODO or meeting entry on my Nokia which then uses GooSync to Sync up to my Google Calendar. If the email is something that I can't schedule or reply to immediately, I save it in a folder with a priority, "p1", "p2" etc. If I've got a bunch of emails in p1 etc. I'll send an email to my Highrise dropbox for later on (tomorrow, thisweek, nextweek etc) to review that inbox so that I don't forget I've got stuff sitting there (I read my email in Pine so I don't have a "folder list" sitting there). If the email is personal and one that will take longer than 2 minutes to respond to, I save it in "letters" which I usually go through once every few weeks on a weekend when I feel like doing some long form communications :) Additionally I block off some time in my Calendar each week to ensure I review all inboxes and task lists in Highrise to ensure nothing slips through the cracks, and sometimes on a Monday I'll spend a good 2 hours getting a bunch of random inbox cruft out of the way before I start work. This is all geared towards being able to deal with prioritisation on the fly when I'm deep in the coding zone or working to a deadline with lots of peripheral things like support requests, sales calls, proposals etc. that still have to get done. The most important thing is having somewhere to stick anything that comes in so that you will always get to it later, and that the time you get to it is going to be appropriate to the task (ie. no point in reviewing an email 3 months down the track that was requesting a quote for a site to be deployed next week!)