Email-to-task is the process of converting a request contained in an email into a standalone task, with a clear action, an owner, a due date, and a link back to the source message. Email-to-task can be manual (forwarding to a task app or dragging an email into a to-do list) or automatic, where software reads the message and creates the task.
What makes a good task from an email
"Re: Q3 planning" is not a task. "Send Dana the revised Q3 budget by Thursday" is. A useful conversion rewrites the subject line into an action with a verb, pulls the deadline out of the body if there is one, and keeps a link to the thread so the context is one click away.
Ways to turn emails into tasks
- Gmail's Add to Tasks option, which creates a Google Tasks item from the email.
- Outlook's flag, which puts the message on your To Do list.
- Forwarding to a task app's unique email address.
- An AI assistant that reads the request and creates the task on its own.
Email-to-task vs. flagging or starring
A star or flag marks a message as important without saying what to do about it. Over time a starred folder becomes a second inbox. A task names the action and a date, which is what makes it possible to finish. The manual method is in how to turn emails into tasks.
How Synced handles email-to-task
Synced turns messages into tasks as part of each Action Plan. In Synced, a Task is a to-do for a person: something a conversation delegated that software can't do, like reviewing a contract. Work Synced can do itself, like drafting the reply, goes to Decide instead.