Email triage

Email Triage

Process, don't browse. The expensive failure in email is re-reading: opening a message, feeling vague dread, closing it, and opening it again tomorrow - five touches for one decision. This skill forces exactly one touch and one decision per message, and turns the batch into a short action list with the replies already drafted.

Inputs to collect

Before triaging, confirm - and label guesses as guesses:

1. The batch: which messages (a pasted list, a date range, "everything unread"). Default: everything unread.
2. VIP list: names whose messages surface first (boss, key clients, family). Default: infer from sender frequency and title, flagged as a guess.
3. Delegation targets: who can own what kinds of asks. Default: none - nothing gets delegated without a named owner.
4. Task system: where deferred items land (todo app, calendar, plain list). Default: a plain dated list in the output.
5. Reply register: default tone. Match the sender - brief to brief, formal to formal.

Operating procedure

Order matters: time-sensitive items are found first because a triage pass over 200 messages can take an hour, and a same-day deadline buried at position 180 must not wait that long.

Step 1: Sweep for urgent and VIP

Scan the whole batch once for VIP senders and time-sensitive content (deadlines within 48 hours, meeting changes today or tomorrow, anything blocking another person). Pull these to the top and decide them first.

Step 2: Decide every remaining message, top to bottom

One decision per message, in this priority order. Spend no more than 30 seconds deciding - a message that needs more thought than that is, by definition, Defer.

1. Delete / archive - no action, no future reference value. Most email is this. Be ruthless; search recovers mistakes.
2. Do now - a reply would take under 2 minutes. Draft it immediately. Deferring a 1-minute reply costs more than sending it (the 2-minute rule).
3. Delegate - someone else owns it. Draft the forward with a clear ask, a deadline, and enough context that the owner never has to ask "what do you need from me?" Track it as a waiting-for item.
4. Defer - real work required. Convert it to a task phrased as a next action with a concrete verb and a suggested due date, then archive the email. The action lives in the task list, not the inbox.
5. Reference - no action, but genuinely needed later (confirmation numbers, contracts). File it. This bucket should be small; when in doubt, archive and trust search.

Never leave a message in limbo. "I'll look at it later" is not one of the five decisions.

Step 3: Assemble the triage report

Return the batch as a single report (template below). Include the archived/deleted count so nothing feels silently lost.

Step 4: Recommend batch windows

If the user triages reactively all day, prescribe 2-3 fixed processing windows daily (for example 9:00, 13:00, 16:30) with notifications off between them. Continuous checking shatters focus and re-fills the decision queue one message at a time. Recurring structural problems - 40 newsletters, no filters, inbox as to-do list - are a system problem: route to inbox-zero.

Worked artifact: triage report template

EMAIL TRIAGE - [FILL: date] - [FILL: N] messages processed

URGENT / VIP (decided first)
1. [FILL: sender - subject] → [decision] - [why it was urgent]

REPLY NOW (drafts ready to send)
1. To [FILL: sender] re: [subject]
   Draft: "[FILL: 1-3 sentence reply in sender's register]"

DELEGATE
1. Forward to [FILL: owner] re: [subject]
   Ask: "[FILL: specific ask + deadline + context]"
   Waiting-for: [owner] since [date]

TASKS (deferred - add to task system)
1. [FILL: verb-first next action] - due [FILL: date] - from [sender/subject]

REFERENCE (filed)
1. [FILL: item - where filed]

ARCHIVED/DELETED: [FILL: count] messages, no action needed.

Example filled rows: "Reply now → To Priya re: offsite dates - Draft: 'Both weeks work for me; slight preference for the 14th. Booking travel once you confirm.'" and "Task → Draft Q3 budget response for Sam - due Thursday - from Sam/Q3 planning thread."

Deliverable

Produce a triage report containing: urgent/VIP items with decisions, ready-to-send reply drafts, delegation forwards with named owners and deadlines, deferred tasks phrased as verb-first next actions with due dates, a short reference list, and the archived/deleted count.

Do NOT

• Do not summarize the inbox without deciding it - a summary still leaves every message untouched.
• Do not let a "Do now" balloon past 2 minutes; convert it to Defer and keep moving. Processing and doing are separate modes.
• Do not delegate without a named owner, a specific ask, and a deadline - a bare forward is deferred confusion.
• Do not file more than a handful of messages as Reference; an overgrown reference bucket is an archive with extra steps.
• Do not skip the deleted count. Trust in the triage depends on knowing nothing vanished silently.

Quality bar

• Every message in the batch has exactly one of the five decisions - zero limbo items.
• Every draft reply matches the sender's register and is sendable without edits.
• Every deferred task starts with a concrete verb and carries a due date.
• Every delegated item names an owner and appears in the waiting-for list.
• Urgent and VIP items appear at the top, decided first.