The #1 Productivity App I Use and Why You Should Consider Using It Too

A game-changer in workplace productivity

Do you ever worry about whether your email will receive a response?

Sure, we can give individuals the benefit of the doubt because we are all busy, but does that excuse your responsibility to ensure you are receiving timely responses to move along with your projects and goals?

Constantly searching your “Sent” folder for those sent emails can be quite time-consuming, and who has time for that?

Doing so can also contribute to higher baseline stress, as you continuously worry whether your emails are being responded to in a timely manner. Sure, it doesn’t seem like all that much time is spent in a single day.; however, when adding all the time in a week in which you try to ensure you aren’t letting a message or thread fall through the cracks, it takes more time, stress, and effort than you realize.

You may or may not have heard of the Boomerang application, which works for Gmail and Outlook. There are multiple features that I do not use and will not cover here, but the application’s primary use in my Microsoft Windows workflow is to resurface emails to my inbox if I do not receive a timely email response. In the article below, I will cover just how the Boomerang application has proved to be a game-changer in my workplace productivity and how it can be the same in yours.

The Consequences

Have you ever dropped the ball on an important deadline?

It’s a busy Monday morning when your manager calls you into their office. “We’ve already sent the report out, correct?” your manager questions. Your neutral look immediately turns to distress as you reply, “What report?”

You followed up with the client multiple times to ensure things continued progressing with the project, and you felt content with how things were going. However, another project later began and captured your attention, and by doing so, you neglected to follow up with the client to complete the final report by today, the deadline.

The problem now, however, is that it is the deadline, and the process of finalizing the report to the client will take longer than today’s time.

You dropped the ball, and there’s sadly nothing you can do about it.

Perhaps you haven’t experienced the same exact situation described. Nonetheless, you’ve likely experienced something similar. Something for which you knew you were responsible, and you didn’t do your due diligence to get the answers and responses you needed promptly. Once you have experienced something similar, you immediately want to figure out what you can do to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Because once is a learning experience, while twice is a recurring issue.

The Subpar Alternatives

BCC’ing

Having experienced similar situations myself, I began experimenting with alternatives. At first, I would try to blind carbon copy (BCC) myself on emails, which essentially sends a copy of the same message back to your email inbox, with the intent of you being able to store the message for later follow-up. The “blind” part of BCC acts to conceal from any recipients that you’ve sent the message to yourself. I found that while this approach could be helpful, there wasn’t a significant benefit to doing so.

Microsoft Outlook Flags

I used the built-in flagging functionality within Outlook for desktops for over a year. First, you can flag an email within a given folder, such as your inbox, as a visual reminder that an action is required. However, after doing some further experimenting, I learned that not only messages received but also messages sent can be flagged for follow-up. When composing an email message, you specify when you’d like to receive a follow-up reminder from the sent message. Outlook will then automatically remind you on the specified day.

The Problem

The only problem with this solution was that it led to a constant mind-numbing process of receiving the alert, thinking to myself whether I had truly received a follow-up to the message, and sometimes performing searches for multiple minutes to ensure I hadn’t missed the follow-up. Although this solution did work for some time, I thought to myself:

There has to be an easier way to track these emails. For a system or application to be able to automatically do the very task that I’ve manually done for some time.

Then, to the rescue, came the Boomerang app.

Boomerang

In walks the single most useful work-related application I’ve ever used. Period. I say work-related because following up on emails outside my day job is rare. The “handling” of my personal email doesn’t warrant any add-in to ensure I get what I need.

In my client-facing role, I manage tasks and my email inbox like my life depends on it. Being client-facing, a lot of “tasks” being checked off consist of clients responding to my questions (read: emails) and being able to proceed further through the audit. So, in a way, it’s an extension of my task manager, and if you don’t receive the responses to your so-called “tasks” (read: emails), you risk serious delays with associated consequences.

Boomerang acts the same way as the Microsoft Outlook flags mentioned above, except for the one problem that Microsoft flags have, Boomerang doesn’t. The Boomerang app solved the one problem I’d been facing — constantly having to figure out whether I’d followed up on an email, for which I could mark as “completed,” or whether I had not yet received a response, for which the email would remain on my task list and would have to be followed up on and re-set for a future reminder.

Boomerang solves this problem by allowing you to specify a time in which a “determination needs to be made.” That is a time at which an email that has not yet been responded to will return to your inbox, prompting you to follow up with the client on your original message. Alternatively, if the email was responded to since you sent your original message, this is where the magic happens.

The application knows not to return emails that were previously responded to before the reminder date.

You may first ask why this would be helpful, but think about it. If a response had been sent before the reminder date, the message would have already returned to your inbox again, prompting you to respond if needed. And this is the important part — listen closely — if you need to be sure that you receive a response on the next email message, simply specify that you will need another response by a certain date. There you have it, your solution to never again playing the email mind game of whether you need to follow up.

Conclusion

We first covered the anxiety and stress-provoking issue of worrying whether critical emails requiring your responses are being responded to timely. Then, we covered an example, which shed light on the troubles that can follow if you do not follow up effectively on emails requiring it. We then talked through potential solutions and their associated pitfalls, which finally led us to the Boomerang application, which, I believe, can be an incredible tool at your disposal.

So what now? You may be asking: Should I download and install the plugin for Boomerang? Is this what I need in my current role?

I’d then ask what you do in your job role. Do you spend most of your day in your email inbox, where you are constantly needed to follow up, similarly to myself? Then, perhaps you could benefit from the solution. Do you work in construction or a warehouse, for which you don’t even have an email, or only check it occasionally for workplace news and announcements? Well, if you fall in this category, I’d be incredibly surprised if you’ve read this far — if so, please let me know — I greatly appreciate your support.

Regardless, I hope this article has helped explain the usefulness of a simple tool, and if you do decide to try it out, I hope it helps you as much as it’s helped me.