Guides

How to catch the deadlines buried in your email

“Can you confirm by Thursday?” is a deadline, but it sits in your inbox like any other message. How to spot the dates people ask for, keep them in view, and answer before they pass.

Most deadlines at work don’t arrive as calendar invites. They’re a phrase in the middle of an email or a Slack message: “can you confirm by Thursday”, “we need the signed copy before EOD”, “no later than Oct 23”. Your inbox sorts by when a message arrived, not by when it’s due, so Monday’s email asking for Thursday sinks below Tuesday’s newsletters.

Read for “by”, “before” and “no later than”

• The words that set a deadline are few: by, before, no later than, end of day (EOD), end of the week. When you read an email, those are the words to stop at.
• Notice whose deadline it is. “Can you send it by Friday?” is a date someone needs from you. “I’ll send it by Friday” is their own plan, worth noting only if you’re waiting on it.
• Skip the phrases that only look like deadlines: “stop by Thursday” is a visit, and “by today’s standards” is an idiom.

Turn the words into a date

“Friday” in an email sent on Monday means that Friday. Open the same email the following week and “Friday” may already have passed. When you note a deadline, write the actual date, counted from when the email was sent, not from when you read it.

Keep it where you’ll see it on the day

• If the answer takes two minutes, send it now and skip the bookkeeping.
• If not, snooze or flag it to the morning it’s due, not to “later”. A reminder on the wrong day is easy to wave away.
• Look at what’s due today first thing in the morning, and again before you stop for the day.

When you’re the one who set the date

The same goes the other way. If you asked someone for something by Friday, a nudge on Wednesday reads as impatience. Wait until the day after the date, then ask about the specific thing, and make it easy to say where it stands.