Thoughts on not seeing messages I can't deal with (yet, or now, or here...)

Thoughts on not seeing messages I can't deal with (yet, or now, or here...)

[Carl Worth]

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[This mail started as some off-topic rambling in my reply to the
notmuch-reply script. So that's why it starts on one topic and ends
somewhere else entirely.]

I'm currently avoiding any locking failures with notmuch commands by
running "notmuch new" manually, (rather than from a cron job). And it
occurs to me that running "notmuch new" manually has a certain
benefit---it allows me to bring in a chunk of mail, and then process all
of that (either by replying, or setting aside to a particular project or
"todo" tag, etc.) without getting distracted by other mail coming in.

It almost makes me want to just run "notmuch new" something like once
per day.

But then, of course, there are times where there are important messages
I need to get to quickly, or fast-moving threads where I need to reply
several times throughout the day.

But I do have particular mailing lists that I don't want to read more
than once a day, for instance. If I wait until I have about a days worth
of mail in those lists, then I can deal with them very efficiently,
(just scan all the subjects, read a thread or two and the "* -inbox" the
rest). This gets a lot less efficient if I have to deal with those lists
on a regular basis throughout the day, (particularly before we have
support for "muted" threads).

So I'd like to be able to deal with important messages as they come in,
but postpone bulk stuff.

But I also notice that there's a bad tendency I have if I try to do this
postponing manually. Mail starts collecting in one of these bulk-list
folders, and I start training myself to ignore the folder, then it gets
huge, (which discourages me even more from looking at it, etc.). [*]

So I want better support from notmuch to tell me what things deserve my
attention, so that I can avoid training myself to ignore things. I think
what I want here is the ability to set a threshold on a particular
folder based on number of messages or date. Something like: "Don't show
me this folder at all until it has more than X messages or until the
oldest message is at least Y hours old".

[*] A similar, (but more dangerous), problem occurs with manually
postponing things into a "todo" folder. If I just added a bunch of
things to my todo folder then I have a tendency to think, "I don't need
to look at that---that's got a bunch of things I just decided to
postpone". But then I forget that I put some things in there previously
that really need my attention now.

I know that what I really want instead of "todo" is a way to express the
reason I'm postponing a message. There's probably some resource I'm
missing that I need before I can deal with it. Perhaps that's:

  * I can't decide on this until I'm with co-workers and can talk about
    this.

  * I can't resolve this until I'm at the office with the right hardware
    to test.

  * I need to remember to do something with this when I'm at home.

  * I need a nice block of "discretionary time" to be able to give this
    topic the attention I want to.

  * I need to look at this message again on this Saturday.

So what I really want to do is to tag things based on those criteria,
("office", "magic-hardware", "home", "discretionary", "2010-02-27"),
which I can at least do now.

But what I'm currently missing is a way for the folders based on these
tags to only appear at the right times, (when the resource is
available).

When the messages appear at the wrong times, it just trains me to ignore
things, and that's when I start forgetting things and let things fall
through.

No concrete proposal here, but just some musings on the kinds of issues
I'd really like to be exploring with notmuch, (once we can get past all
these little things like maildir flags, keybindings, failed HTML
rendering, missing FCC support, etc. etc. etc.).

-Carl

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Re: Thoughts on not seeing messages I can't deal with (yet, or now, or here...)

[Mark Anderson]

Carl,

There's a post from a while ago about using GTD on Remember The Milk.

Remember the Milk as described here is mainly a todo manager, but the
saved search (as a list of todo tasks that match the criterion) is
what's being utilized here that makes me think so much of notmuch.

This seems to capture some of the things that you want to see, since you
are trying to manage action items which happen to live in mail bodies.

http://blog.rememberthemilk.com/2008/05/guest-post-advanced-gtd-with-remember-the-milk/

apparently another post has expired on the topic, with some focus on
contexts:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080331121051/http://www.geektronica.com/2007-01-15-gtd-with-rtm-getting-things-done-with-remember-the-milk

The main tool in use here is a viewport on the collection of things that
might need to be reviewed. RTM tabs (which are saved searches) which you
have designed to be the contexts you might be executing in, in this
case.

I know this is related pretty heavily to what you are looking for, but
how to bring this about specifically, that's going to be up to you.

Enjoy,
-Mark

On Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:00:06 -0600, Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org> wrote:
> [This mail started as some off-topic rambling in my reply to the
> notmuch-reply script. So that's why it starts on one topic and ends
> somewhere else entirely.]
> 
> I'm currently avoiding any locking failures with notmuch commands by
> running "notmuch new" manually, (rather than from a cron job). And it
> occurs to me that running "notmuch new" manually has a certain
> benefit---it allows me to bring in a chunk of mail, and then process all
> of that (either by replying, or setting aside to a particular project or
> "todo" tag, etc.) without getting distracted by other mail coming in.
> 
> It almost makes me want to just run "notmuch new" something like once
> per day.
> 
> But then, of course, there are times where there are important messages
> I need to get to quickly, or fast-moving threads where I need to reply
> several times throughout the day.
> 
> But I do have particular mailing lists that I don't want to read more
> than once a day, for instance. If I wait until I have about a days worth
> of mail in those lists, then I can deal with them very efficiently,
> (just scan all the subjects, read a thread or two and the "* -inbox" the
> rest). This gets a lot less efficient if I have to deal with those lists
> on a regular basis throughout the day, (particularly before we have
> support for "muted" threads).
> 
> So I'd like to be able to deal with important messages as they come in,
> but postpone bulk stuff.
> 
> But I also notice that there's a bad tendency I have if I try to do this
> postponing manually. Mail starts collecting in one of these bulk-list
> folders, and I start training myself to ignore the folder, then it gets
> huge, (which discourages me even more from looking at it, etc.). [*]
> 
> So I want better support from notmuch to tell me what things deserve my
> attention, so that I can avoid training myself to ignore things. I think
> what I want here is the ability to set a threshold on a particular
> folder based on number of messages or date. Something like: "Don't show
> me this folder at all until it has more than X messages or until the
> oldest message is at least Y hours old".
> 
> [*] A similar, (but more dangerous), problem occurs with manually
> postponing things into a "todo" folder. If I just added a bunch of
> things to my todo folder then I have a tendency to think, "I don't need
> to look at that---that's got a bunch of things I just decided to
> postpone". But then I forget that I put some things in there previously
> that really need my attention now.
> 
> I know that what I really want instead of "todo" is a way to express the
> reason I'm postponing a message. There's probably some resource I'm
> missing that I need before I can deal with it. Perhaps that's:
> 
>   * I can't decide on this until I'm with co-workers and can talk about
>     this.
> 
>   * I can't resolve this until I'm at the office with the right hardware
>     to test.
> 
>   * I need to remember to do something with this when I'm at home.
> 
>   * I need a nice block of "discretionary time" to be able to give this
>     topic the attention I want to.
> 
>   * I need to look at this message again on this Saturday.
> 
> So what I really want to do is to tag things based on those criteria,
> ("office", "magic-hardware", "home", "discretionary", "2010-02-27"),
> which I can at least do now.
> 
> But what I'm currently missing is a way for the folders based on these
> tags to only appear at the right times, (when the resource is
> available).
> 
> When the messages appear at the wrong times, it just trains me to ignore
> things, and that's when I start forgetting things and let things fall
> through.
> 
> No concrete proposal here, but just some musings on the kinds of issues
> I'd really like to be exploring with notmuch, (once we can get past all
> these little things like maildir flags, keybindings, failed HTML
> rendering, missing FCC support, etc. etc. etc.).
> 
> -Carl
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> _______________________________________________
> notmuch mailing list
> notmuch@notmuchmail.org
> http://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch

Re: Thoughts on not seeing messages I can't deal with (yet, or now, or here...)

[Michal Sojka]

On Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:00:06 -0800, Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org> wrote:
> [This mail started as some off-topic rambling in my reply to the
> notmuch-reply script. So that's why it starts on one topic and ends
> somewhere else entirely.]
> 
> I'm currently avoiding any locking failures with notmuch commands by
> running "notmuch new" manually, (rather than from a cron job). And it
> occurs to me that running "notmuch new" manually has a certain
> benefit---it allows me to bring in a chunk of mail, and then process all
> of that (either by replying, or setting aside to a particular project or
> "todo" tag, etc.) without getting distracted by other mail coming in.

That's what I like on notmuch too. (I also don't use cron.)

> I know that what I really want instead of "todo" is a way to express the
> reason I'm postponing a message. There's probably some resource I'm
> missing that I need before I can deal with it. Perhaps that's:
> 
>   * I can't decide on this until I'm with co-workers and can talk about
>     this.
> 
>   * I can't resolve this until I'm at the office with the right hardware
>     to test.
> 
>   * I need to remember to do something with this when I'm at home.
> 
>   * I need a nice block of "discretionary time" to be able to give this
>     topic the attention I want to.
> 
>   * I need to look at this message again on this Saturday.
> 
> So what I really want to do is to tag things based on those criteria,
> ("office", "magic-hardware", "home", "discretionary", "2010-02-27"),
> which I can at least do now.
> 
> But what I'm currently missing is a way for the folders based on these
> tags to only appear at the right times, (when the resource is
> available).

It seems I have the same needs as you. I use Emacs's org-mode for
managing my TODO list and I find org-remember very useful in this
context.

It works like this: I have a global key binding (C-c r) for org-remember
and whenever I press this key a new buffer appears. I write my TODO item
there and after C-c C-c the buffer is appended to my TODO list. What is
important, is that the remember buffer may be pre-filled with some
information based on major mode of from where it was invoked. This
information might be a so called org-link (a link to another entity
which emacs can work with). David Bremner did some work
(id:8763805hr2.fsf@pivot.cs.unb.ca) to support links to mails in
notmuch, but I haven't tried it yet.

So I'd like to process my mail like this: If I cannot complete the mail
immediately, I'll press "C-c r" to create a new TODO item where I
mention what is needed for completing this mail. The TODO item will
automatically contain a link to the original message. I can also add
some Org Mode properties such as SCHEDULED or DEADLINE. Then I remove
unread and inbox tags from the message. This way I'll process the whole
inbox until it becomes empty.

Then I will use org-mode's Agenda view to show me what to do just now.
Thanks to the properties such as SCHEDULED, I won't see items which I do
not want to see today.

If I complete some TODO item, I'll use org-link to immediately jump to
the original message and I'll reply to it.

The only problem here is some kind of duplication. Org-mode has its own
tags and these have nothing in common with notmuch tags. So, in order to
use tags your TODO items and mails, you would need to tag them twice
(once in notmuch and once in org).

What might work here would be some kind of integration between Org's
Agenda view and notmuch search. But I do not have an exact idea how this
could look like.

Bye
Michal