2015-03-14 – Taming Email with OmniFocus

Use OmniFocus in combination with third-party apps and services to effectively and efficiently manage your email

When asked to share their biggest productivity challenges, people often include email management at the top of the list. Email has the potential to be a convenient and productive communication medium, but more often becomes a source of stress that leads to wasted hours. In this session, we’ll look at best practices and practical workflows that make use of OmniFocus and third-party apps and services to help you tame your inbox.

OmniFocus 3 for Mac

This session was recorded using OmniFocus 2 for Mac. If you’re using OmniFocus 3, check out the updated session, Taming Email with OmniFocus 3. This session is available to all active Learn OmniFocus Members.

Change to Airmail 3 Rule

When creating the Airmail 3 Rule shown in the video it’s now necessary to uncheck the Enable checkbox; this will prevent the rule from triggering on every new message. You’ll still be able to manually trigger the rule by using the keyboard shortcut that you specify when creating the rule.

Sponsored by SaneBox – Free Trial + $20 Credit

This session was sponsored by SaneBox, a web-based service that works on top of your email account to prioritize important email. SaneBox also has a wealth of other features, including the ability to track responses and to snooze non-urgent emails.

logo-sanebox-415x66

Watch the session to learn more about Sanebox (42:04)…then click learnomnifocus.com/go/sanebox to try SaneBox for 14-days and to receive a $20 credit (new subscribers only). Thanks to SaneBox’s generous sponsorship, a recording of this session is being made available to everyone free of charge.

Session Overview

Topics featured in this session include:

  • Recommendations for dealing with high volumes of email
  • Best practices for composing and replying to emails
  • Creating OmniFocus actions based on emails using the OS X Mail app in combination with the “OmniFocus 2: Send to Inbox” Service and the OmniFocus Clip-o-Tron plug-in
  • Third-party email clients for Mac with OmniFocus integration, including Airmail 2, Postbox and MailPlane 3
  • Creating actions based on Outlook 2011 emails, calendar events and contacts using Outlook 2011 to OmniFocus script by Veritrope
  • Using the Mac utility Hazel to create OmniFocus actions based on PDF attachments. See the Create OmniFocus Tasks with Applescript blog post by David Sparks for additional information.
  • An overview and practical applications of the Mail Drop to Inbox feature of the Omni Sync Server
  • Automating the creation of OmniFocus actions using the IFTTT (If This Then That) service
  • Using the SaneBox service to automatically filter the inbox, to track responses to emails and to defer emails to a future date
  • Reducing email volume and improving efficiency by using Asana for project management
  • Efficient email processing on iOS using Dispatch for iPhone
  • And more…

Recommended Reading

  • MacSparky Email Field Guide — A comprehensive guide to email on Mac and iOS written by David Sparks (aka MacSparky). In his own words: “This book tackles your over-stuffed inbox. The Email Field Guide covers both why email has become such a problem for everyone and how to manage it more effectively.”
    iBooks Store ]
  • Getting Things Done, 2nd Edition — The second edition of the internationally popular “manual” for David Allen’s Getting Things Done approach. Forecasted availability is March 17, 2015.
    iBooks Store ]

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