Handling Gmail - Replying at a later time.

Handling Gmail - Replying at a later time

Sometimes when you are going through mail you may want to postpone taking action on some messages by postponing the task. Reasons could be:

• ·        You are very busy to answer at that moment
• ·        Reply requires preparation – attachment / draft composing etc
• ·        You are not in right frame of mind
• ·        The sender is not in a great hurry
• ·        You have plenty of time to respond

However, what you may do in such a situation might be:

1   1   To STAR the message with different colors to look into it later
2      To mark it unread
3.     To create a task and set a time for reminding you
4.     To snooze it and put off to take up at some point later
5.     Do all or many of these in combination.

Despite knowing and doing many of the above things, some important messages may slip out and remain unanswered. When I detect an important message requiring certain specific response action  (example: send a story or write an article for press or seminar), I send a quick “canned reply”  requesting the sender to kindly remind me by such and such date.  Gmail is very useful in composing several standard templates / replies that you may just pick up and include in your reply. Most importantly you may avoid postponing replies by quickly resorting to short responses auto-suggested by Gmail itself, wherever feasible or meaningful.

I mentioned a number of options above. Which is your preferred way and why?