Never Forget to Follow Up on an Email Again!

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video I’ll share my secret to always remembering to follow up on emails.

How many times has this happened to you?  You ask someone a question over email, you mentally cross it off your list, and then you totally forget to follow up to actually get the answer to the question?  Then, a couple of weeks later you’re like “Crap!  Did I ever hear back from so and so on that??”

Okay — I’m super forgetful, so this used to happen to me all the time. I tend to remember when a question is urgent, but when I don’t need the answer right away — poof, it leaves my head as soon as the email leaves my outbox. 

Some people are fantastic and quick at email responses, some are terrible, and some are pretty good some of the time. The thing is, YOU are the one that needs the answer to the question, so you can’t just assume you’ll get a response eventually.  It’s up to you to follow up. 

So, here is my solution. For every email where I am asking a question of any kind, I blind copy myself on it. It probably took a little while to make this into a habit, but after more than a decade of doing this, it’s now totally reflexive.  Here’s an example email where I’m asking for an expense report.  Okay — once I hit send, I get a copy sent right back to my inbox.  Now, what do I do with this?  If it does happen to be an urgent question that needs to be answered within the next day or so, I leave it in my inbox to serve as an immediate reminder.  But more frequently, like in the case of this question, I don’t really need an answer right away.  So, I created a special email folder called “+Outstanding Questions”. Why does it have a plus sign in front of it?  So that it sorts to the top of my email folders.  Then I file the email in Outstanding Questions. 

Then once a week, for me on Sundays, I have a Toodledo task that reminds me to go through my Outstanding Questions folder and follow up on of the emails in that folder.  I have the same process for work — also using a weekly follow up reminder. I also put any emails in there that govern things I am waiting for, but that are not urgent, like a package delivery or reimbursement notices.  

I included this process in my video on my Single Stream Email Organization, but I think it is helpful even if you haven’t bought into my whole system.  Let me know what you think!  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!