One Awesome Place to Capture Your Tasks

Your email inbox is a great place to capture tasks on the go. Even if you have 9,000 current unread messages.

A few reasons to consider emailing yourself your tasks:

• 99.9% of people that I know in ministry use email. Less than 50% of (more like 20%) use some sort of task management tool consistently and efficiently.
• It’s next to impossible to ignore your inbox for an extended period of time.
• It’s extremely convenient to email yourself, especially if you have a smartphone or iPod touch. So many tasks I “remember” at an awkward time. Email provides a temporary place to capture and hold a task until I can get back to it and give it the time it deserves.
• It feels really good to delete emails and check off completed tasks. Using email for task management taps into both of these!

Becoming proficient at task management is all about getting over that initial hump and making it a habit, not just an occasional exercise in frustration. Although I have a robust system for managing my tasks, emailing myself tasks often gets me through times when I’m extremely busy or burnt out on keeping my system going.

This is what inspires me to keep working on task management: “A person needs to move tasks out of the mind by recording them externally. That way, the mind is freed from the job of remembering everything that needs to be done, and can concentrate on actually performing those tasks.” - Wikipedia Article on Getting Things Done.

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