Stop 1 of 8 · Daily
The promises log
Every morning, turn the inbox into a list of what you owe people and what they owe you.
Your inbox is a ledger of promises
By nine in the morning you have agreed to four things. A price hold for Bright Smile. A callback about a backordered curing light. A W-9 for the new account in Tustin. A delivery moved to Thursday. None of it is written down anywhere except in sent mail, and sent mail is not a list.
A promise is anything a customer, a supplier or an employee can hold you to: a date, a price, a quantity, a callback. An FYI is everything else. The first thirty minutes of the day is one job, sorting one from the other, and getting the promises out of your head onto a page with an owner and a date beside each.
What comes out of the pass
| From the email | Into the log |
|---|---|
| I will get you a price on the composite by Friday | Promise, Nadia, Friday |
| We are changing practice managers next month | FYI, no action |
| Can you confirm the twelve boxes shipped | Promise owed to Nadia by the warehouse, today |
The rule that makes the log worth keeping: every line has a person on it. Not the team, not the office. Marisol in the warehouse, Danny on the route, you. A promise with no owner comes back to you at six in the evening.
Try this
Read my inbox from 5pm yesterday until now. For every message tell me one of three things: a promise I made, a promise someone owes me, or an FYI. For each promise give me the person, what was promised, and the date it is due. Put the promises in a table, soonest due date first, and list the FYIs underneath in one line each.
From that list, pick the three messages where a four-sentence reply from me today closes the loop. Draft each one: confirm what we are doing, give a specific date, end with my first name. Put square brackets around any number you are not certain of and list those at the end. Save them as Gmail drafts and do not send anything.
Look at the promises I made in that list. Which ones can only be done by me, and which could the warehouse lead or a sales rep do if I wrote two sentences of instruction? For the second group, write those two sentences.