I've been looking for a different interface for email that focuses on actions and not emails. Other types of communication, e.g. RSS, could feed actions into the same interface. Every incoming email is an intended action: a text that you intend to read and decide to either take any number of actions on.
At different times of the day, different filters apply. During work hours, only work mails and a few personal contacts get through the filter and on my 'read mail' task. I perform the 'read mail' task a few times during work.
Outside of work, only mails with private topics will get through. Phone and text can be used for urgent work issues. For mailing lists, each updated thread is one read task.
Every read task can lead to one or more immediate or intended actions. Intended actions have categories.
Different types of actions:
- current action: the action I'm taking right now
- action stack: a current action can lead to a small subactions
- intended action: action that is in the system and shows up as a possible current action. This includes sports and cooking.
- planned action: an action with a fixed start time, usually these are synchronous with actions of other people e.g. meetings or travel.
An important feature of this interface is to group and filter actions by context. When working on project X, only show actions of project X. This reduces the huge number of context switches the many people struggle with.
Every action that is taken is linked to the action that led to it. Sending email gives the option to create an intended action for a follow-up when there is no reply from the receiver within a set time.
While an action is being performed, your computer IO is monitored. These data packets, e.g. git commits, changed files, emails sent, visited web pages, sent web forms, can be included in an action report. This way, there is a simple report after each action.
All action reports form your archive. The archive are your past actions, they are out of your way once you've dealt with them.
Man, I miss Agenda :( It basically did that automatically.