Alfred snippet idea: Waiting For

I often need to wait to hear back from someone about an issue or question, but I didn’t have a system for tracking those instances.

Lazy.

So, I created a new Alfred clipboard snippet!

Dynamic placeholders are cool.

• {date:full} looks like Thursday, April 24, 2014.
• {time:long} looks like 10:18:20 PM PDT.
• {clipboard} is used for the internal thread URL.

In practice, each entry takes less than one minute:

1. Copy the URL to my clipboard.
2. Press Command–Alt–C to display Alfred’s clipboard viewer hotkey.
3. Type my “Waiting For” snippet keyword: a8cwf.
4. Fill out the “Who” and “What” lines.
5. Review your Waiting For entries when needed.

I could remove the “Who” line, but the “What” line should be a super short sentence (or two).

Once the entry is no longer relevant, remove it.

Why not use a task manager?

I don’t feel like putting these into Things. Those are tasks I need to do.

In contrast, I review my Waiting For entries periodically and ping people when appropriate.

I confess. I’ve scheduled a task to appear every other day to review my Waiting For entries. If those grow, perhaps I should consider adding more context in those threads.

I’m feeling good about this one. 🙂