Searching for the "Answer Later" Button

This my second Post in a serie called "Why we are building Kwaga"

Searching for the "Answer Later" Button

As a Gmail addict, I check my Inbox constantly and I almost always read email sequentially as soon as they arrive, in reverse chronological order (i.e. I read first the most recent mail).
And I do that on whatever device I have: my desktop, my laptop, my iPhone (either with the native mail app or directly through GMail web app) or any connected device.

For each mail that I read, I decide on the spot what I need to do with it: answer immediately, delete it, keep it for later reference or, and this is the worst case, defer it for later action. It's the worst case because to remember that I have something to do with a mail, I have to mark it in some way. I could change it back to unread, but then I will have to remember not to read it again next time I check my mail. If I'm on my desktop or laptop, I can use this wonderful Gmail feature name "Tasks". This will put a reference to my mail in a Task list that I can review, and act upon, later on. Good enough but not perfect because even if I do not answer on the spot, most of the mails that I keep in Tasks just need to be answered. So, once I answer them, they should disappear from the Tasks list.

So my "perfect" mail routine should be just like this:

1. answer on the spot if it's possible;
2. if I have no time to answer now, click on an "Answer Later" button - or maybe mails that "need answering" could be tagged automatically;
3. from time to time, review the "Answer Later" list, safe in the knowledge that as soon as I answer a mail, it will automatically get out of this list.

My clever reader will recognize that there is neither "Answer Later" button nor "Answer Later" list in Gmail. This why we will be adding a button to the Gmail interface to do just that: the "Add To Kwaga" button. Each mail that you mark this way will go to your "ToDo list" (under the MyKwaga button), and will be taken out automatically as soon as you answer.

Even better, mails that contain specific action requests or that are "followed" by their senders will also go automatically in this list.

This should go live in our private beta this week. Tell us what you think!

This is one of my drive in founding Kwaga: get a mail routine as simple but as efficient as possible.

Did you forget me?

This is my first Post in a serie called "Why we are building Kwaga"

I write a lot of mail. To a lot of people. And I have huge expectations. I really would like mail exchange to be just like a conversation, only asynchronous.

However, conversations, being real time and real space, have one big advantage: when the opposite party fails to answer, it's pretty obvious. No such things in mail: how many threads fall behind by lack of answer from one of the protagonists?

And I'm not perfect either, so I probably fail to answer to a fair share of threads.

I used to "Star" threads that I really wanted to get an answer to. This didn't work so well because I often forgot to "Unstar" them once I got an answer. And it worked only in one direction, from me the to world. It did not help when I was the one forgetting to answer.

So we dreamed a feature for Kwaga: "Send and Follow". When I want an answer, I use the "Send and Follow" button instead of the "Send" button. I can even set a time frame, like if I would like an answer for tomorrow or next week. That way, from time to time, I can review my "Followed mail" list and see which threads I lagging and need follow-up, safely knowing that answered threads are automatically taken out of this list.

And from the other side, if both my correspondent and I have Kwaga, I know which threads I still have to answer.

Just like when I had a personal assistant. Neat. This is why we are building Kwaga.

And you, how do you keep people for forgetting to answer ?