Just a quick post from me today, but I wanted to tell you about a really great tool I’ve found to keep your GMail account under control. Its called Boomerang.
I’d heard about Boomerang before, but up until now had dismissed it as something that I didn’t need. However, now I’ve had a deeper look at both Boomerang and my e-mail inbox, the features in Boomerang are really appealing to me.
So, What Is Boomerang
Boomerang connects into your GMail account or is installed as an addin for Outlook and enables you to apply GTD to your emails. Here are just some of the features:
- Defer an incoming email till later. If the email is something that you don’t need right now, but you will at some stage int he future, then you can hit the boomerang button and it will dissapear from your inbox and magically appear when you specify. A tickler file for your inbox.
- Delay sending an email. Not sure how often I would use this, but if you wanted to send an email later on (for instance, you want to send a birthday email), but you know you won’t have time to write it on the day it needs to go, you could write it now and defer sending it.
- Follow up reminder. There is an option to boomerang hte message back to your inbox if you don’t get a response within a certain amount of time.
Ways To Use Boomerang
- So, just some of the ways I have come up with to use Boomerang:
- Work as a tickler file for tickets you have booked weeks in advance of needing them
- Remind you that you are waiting for a reply to an email you have sent
- Send emails at key times to people in different time zones
Summary
I’m really excited about Boomerang now I have had chance to install it. I need to do a big clear out of my inbox, but Boomerang coupled with heavy use of filters should hopefully keep my email inbox to zero.
I am forever losing track of emails. Now I really will be able to fire and forget, and then get reminded that I haven’t had a response from a question I asked, so I can keep on top of my correspondence.
I won’t need to spend an hour searching my email for all my travel and accommodation plans before I go on holiday.
If you use either Outlook or GMail, you really need to check out Boomerang and see how it can work for you.
