Time for a break from all the navel-gazing. Let’s do some traffic-whoring, and talk Getting Things Done. GTDMail works great for 90 percent of my time management needs. One thing it lacks, though, is a tickler. For GTD newbs, a tickler is a filing system in which you store reminders for future tasks. You really need this sense of time in order to defer items and get them out of your head. Bryan and I thought about writing one ourselves, but then we stumbled across FutureMail. It’s a simple little web app that emails you custom reminders at a specified time.

Let’s say my bank emails me to let me know that my next power bill is available, and due in three weeks. It takes five days for my electronic bill payments to go through. With Gmail alone, I would have to put the notice in my “@Waiting For” context, and remember to review it often enough so that I pay the bill on time. In this scenario, the bill never really leaves my mind, because there is a possibility that I could check “@Waiting For” on the wrong day, and end up paying late. Enter FutureMail. I log on and tell it to email me a reminder in two weeks, so that I have a two-day buffer. I put the original email from my bank into “@Waiting For”, so it’s available for reference. Two weeks later, I have an email from FutureMail in my inbox, telling me exactly what I asked for. I process it as I would any new item in my inbox. I can even set up Gmail filters to act on it just like any other new item.

This is literally the way a tickler should work. Everything in your tickler must end up back in your inbox at the proper time. The only drawback is that you have to enter your email subject and text manually on the FutureMail site. Fortunately, Ben is working on an email interface, so eventually I’ll be able to just forward stuff into FutureMail and forget about it until the right time. Et voila, mind like water.

Bonus tip: for microscheduling (setting reminders within the span of a day), I use IM Smarter. I send it an instant message in plain English , and it reminds me in two hours that I’m meeting someone for lunch. Those items don’t even need to be on my GTD radar.