Keeping your tasks in your email program means you can’t close that program (and its attendant distractions) when you want to plow through your task list. While there are those who solve this problem by simply tracking their to-dos using the task manager within Outlook (or another email platform), that approach comes at too steep a cost.
But unlike email they can also track things like what is complete or incomplete, when each task needs to get done, what project a task is related to, or where you need to be in order to do it. The best task managers not only provide you with a single place to capture the tasks you need to get done they also make it easy for you to add tasks by email. Luckily, there are many fantastic task managers that recognize the inextricability of email and task management without lumping the two in together. The reason so many of us fall into the trap of conflating email and task management is that email is inextricable from much of what we do in work and in life: many of our tasks arrive in the form of email messages, and many other tasks require reading or sending emails as part of getting that work done. (And there are probably a few to-do reminders in there that you sent to yourself!) This approach also makes managing your to-do-list problematic: when you need to quickly identify the right task to take on next, nothing slows you down like diving into your inbox to scroll through old messages.
Why do you need to separate these activities out? If you’re conflating email and task management, then the job of simply communicating–reading and replying to your messages–gets bogged down by all the emails you leave sitting in your inbox simply so you won’t forget to address them. Using a separate task manager, one that ties in closely with your email, can help you spend less time sifting through your inbox, and more time getting your most important work done. Do you leave emails in your inbox so that you remember to read or tackle them? If so, you’re using your email to manage your tasks-and those are actually two very different things.
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