Emails To Yourself
One thing I am really trying to get better at is saving information for myself in the right place. I love and swear by the Apple Reminders app but I’ve found that it isn’t always the best place for me to save a lot of information. I like my Reminders to be clear and concise. I use mine as a task list and it’s perfect for that. But sometimes there are bigger things I need reminding of. I could make a note on my phone or create a Google doc, but the likelihood that I will remember to look at it is slim. Sure, I could create a Reminder to do so but I prefer a one-click option.
Enter emails to myself.
I use Gmail for my personal email account (as I’m sure most people do) but even if you don’t use Gmail the feature you really need is to be able to schedule emails. I am the queen of scheduling emails at work. Often times I go through my work inbox at 5am or 8pm and send out replies. I have set a boundary: I do not send emails to anyone outside of normal working hours. So I schedule them using Outlook’s feature. Recipients only receive my emails between 8:30am and 5pm. They can respond whenever they like, and I can respond at any time of day but no one is receiving an email from me timestamped at 11:30pm. If it’s urgent, I send a text message or call someone but realistically nothing about my job is that critical.
Anyway… since I’m so familiar with scheduling emails for other people I thought “Why not do it for myself?” But instead of sending reminders or notes to myself during normal working hours, I’ve done it for the time of the year that is important. For example, I just created a long list of notes that I want to remember for the next holiday season. Lots of things I need past me to remind myself of (for example: you really do need to buy wrapping paper this year because you’re almost out. And don’t wait until December 20th to realize this!) or recipes I want to remember that we used this year. That way I’m not frantically Googling trying to sort through all of the hashbrown casserole recipes to find the one we used on Christmas morning.
I wrote the email over a few days as we would be discussing and said “We need to remember that for next year”. It was nice because it was just a draft in my email until we stopped adding to it and I felt comfortable finalizing it. Now that it’s finished, I’ve scheduled it to arrive in my inbox in mid-October. This is right around the time I start to think about the holiday season, who we’re visiting and when it’s happening, trying to sort out plans, who we still need to figure out gifts for, etc. Based on the list, I can create a list of tasks in Reminders but right now I don’t need the information in my Reminders app. The information lives somewhere and will come to me when I need it. I don’t have to worry about it until October or remember where I put it or go search it out.
I’ve never scheduled an email before, but I love that idea since you would be able to give yourself more context and information all in one place for that later date. I typically use my Google calendar app to add tasks or events to remind future me of something I need to do, such as schedule my kids’ yearly well check visits, flu shots, etc.
Knowing me, I would be nervous that my scheduled email might not be set up correctly and not come through, so I might integrate the two by putting a reminder in my calendar to be on the lookout for the email, just for my own peace of mind. Thank you for sharing your ideas!
I feel so validated knowing I'm not the only one who sends emails to myself..it kind of makes me feel like a crazy person! I've never scheduled them, however, and I think this is genius. Thanks for the tip!