| People like to diss email as a "todo list that other people can add items to", but really, this holds for just about all communication channels. So for me, what worked is to only use one channel (in my case, my work gmail) as a valid TODO-inbox. Everything else doesn't count. This means that if someone WhatsApps me something that requires a TODO, I ask them to email me a reminder. In my particular social situation, this tends to work. If they don't want to do this, it's probably not important enough I keep my email itself clean by using Andreas Klinger's classic gmail-TODO-setup (https://klinger.io/posts/dont-drown-in-email-how-to-use-gmai...). That article is 9 years old now but it still works perfectly, despite Google's reputation for killing niche apps/features. Then, I enable email notifications in key apps (eg Slack and GitHub), most of which I archive right away, but occasionally mark as a TODO using the gmail-TODO-setup. This means I never have a secondary "unread message as TODO items" list in slack, or similar in GitHub. It's very nice. Finally, I use "Simple Gmail Notes" (https://bart.solutions/simple-gmail-notes/) to add little notes to myself about what a TODO-email is about. eg "review this" or "delegate to someone", etc. |