How I Use FollowUpThen To Stay Productive
You are already in your email, why not make it your task list?
Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post. I have no affiliation with FollowUpThen - I'm just a user who finds it incredibly useful.
The Promise Every Productivity Tool Claims to Deliver
We've all been promised the perfect reminder/task system. Digital calendars, task apps, sticky notes, elaborate notebook systems - they all claim they'll help us remember everything important. But here's what they don't tell you: the real challenge isn't creating tasks, it's using the system.
FollowUpThen has worked for me. I’ve been using this system for over four years now, and I think the reason it works so well is that email is already a part of my life that I can’t ignore. Since I am already going to be in my inbox, turning my inbox into my task list just makes sense. (If your email is a wreck, we touched on that last week
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What This Tool Does
FollowUpThen works through email addresses that correspond to when you want to be assigned a task. Send an email to "1week@followupthen.com" and it bounces back to you in exactly one week. Send to "december1@followupthen.com" and you'll get that email every December 1st. Forever. It’s pretty smart too “every4thTuesdayAtNoon” works as well.
It sounds simple, but the implications are profound.
The Power of Set-It-and-Forget-It Systems
Consider what it would take to manually manage the systems I've built with FollowUpThen:
SSL Certificate Management
I have tasks set for “every83days” to check SSL certificate renewals. These certificates last 90 days, but auto-renewal only works in the final 30 days. My 83-day cycle gives me a 7-day window to get the task done, or my websites go down.
Daily Inbox Zero Protocol
Every evening at 8pm, I have an alarm set to achieve inbox zero. This isn't about perfectionism - it's about forcing decision-making. Each email gets processed: archived, deleted, snoozed, or acted upon. On lazy days I just snooze everything until tomorrow, which is fine, I’m human.
Without getting too philosophical here, I don’t get everything I want done. I’ve got some things I’ve been snoozing until next week for a year. But I am forcing myself to make the decision to kick a task or handle it.
The Full Spectrum of Life Management
My FollowUpThen emails can cover everything from mundane maintenance to profound self-reflection:
Weekly accountability: Every Thursday, I get reminded to review my investment mistakes - uncomfortable but valuable for better decision-making.
Seasonal tasks: "Time to plant a tree if you want to" appears every fall, "Work on fence" reminds me about home maintenance before winter.
Investment research: Regular prompts to "Look at Magic Formula List" or ask "What would Nick Sleep buy today?" keep me engaged with my investment philosophy.
One-time future planning: "Remember that donation or expense when you do your taxes" arrives exactly when I'm preparing my February tax documents.
Tracking A Bet: "You and Larry Argued About Where The Freshman Would Be Drafted" arrives five years later, and you can see how the future played out. Of course, you’d only let Larry know if you were right.
The beauty is that each of these was set up once, sometimes years ago, and they've been faithfully executing ever since. No willpower required, no forgetting allowed.
What About Calendar Systems?
I'm not a big calendar person, but I understand many people are thinking: "Why not just use my calendar for this?"
That's totally fair! If your calendar system is working well for you, keep using it. Different tools work for different people, and there's no need to fix what isn't broken.
However, I'd argue that FollowUpThen excels for a specific type of task: important but not precisely time-sensitive tasks. These are things that matter but don't need to happen at exactly 2:30 PM on a specific day.
Calendar systems work great for:
Meetings and appointments
Time-specific deadlines
Events that involve other people
FollowUpThen works better for:
"Remember to check if that payment arrived"
"Time to review investment mistakes"
"Don't forget about that tax deduction when filing"
"Cancel that free trial if you're not using it"
The beauty of FollowUpThen is that these emails arrive in your inbox where you're already processing other tasks, rather than as calendar notifications that might get dismissed and forgotten.
Plus, if you find your calendar system breaking down someday - maybe you change jobs and lose access to your work calendar, or you switch between different calendar apps - give this email-based approach a try. It's surprisingly liberating to have important tasks tied to something as universal and persistent as email.
Beyond Individual Tasks: Building Life Systems
The real revelation isn't about individual todos - it's about building systems that run in the background of your life, handling both recurring patterns and strategic one-time planning:
Recurring systems that run forever:
Annual tax planning tasks that appear every December 1st
Birthday reminders ("Ames Brown Birthday Today")
Seasonal tasks ("Check on investment moves before year-end")
Weekly garbage and recycling reminders
Monthly financial reconciliation ("Import Bank Transactions," "Reconcile Vanguard Statement")
Quarterly technology maintenance ("Backup Google Photos," "Archive old files")
Strategic one-time planning:
"Next Wednesday: Did that check ever get here?" - short-term follow-ups
"28days@fut.io: Cancel free one-month trial if not enjoying it" - service management
Tax-related chores timed for when you'll actually need them
Project deadlines you set for yourself months in advance
Each of these represents something that would traditionally require either hiring someone to manage or developing superhuman organizational skills. The magic is that both types - recurring and one-time - require the same minimal setup effort but deliver value for years.
The Originating vs. Kicking Distinction
Here's a crucial workflow insight that makes FollowUpThen truly powerful: it's designed for originating tasks, not kicking them.
FollowUpThen excels at:
Creating brand new tasks from scratch
Setting up recurring systems
Planning future one-time tasks
Your email client's snooze function is better for:
Postponing existing emails you can't handle today
Quick task deferral
Daily task management
For example, if an email arrives today but you can't deal with it until next week, just snooze it in your email client. But if you want to remember to "Check for tax deductions when doing 2025 taxes," send an email to "feb15@followupthen.com" with the subject "Remember That Donation Or Expense When You Do Your Taxes."
This distinction matters because trying to forward existing emails to FollowUpThen breaks your flow, while using it to create future-focused reminders is seamless.
The complete workflow becomes:
FollowUpThen: When you want to schedule a new task
Email snooze: Kicking existing tasks to more convenient times
FollowUpThen website: Managing and modifying existing follow ups when needed
You can manage your follow-ups directly on their website, giving you a dashboard view of all pending reminders with the ability to modify or cancel them.
What Makes This Revolutionary
Think about what this system provides that your grandparents thought was impossible:
Perfect, eternal memory - It will remind you about the same thing for decades without degradation
Zero maintenance overhead - Set it once and it works forever, requiring no ongoing attention
Immune to life changes - Works the same whether you change jobs, move countries, or switch email clients
Cheap - Provides services that would previously require hiring an assistant
No learning curve - If you can send, delete and snooze emails, you can use this system
The Mental Freedom Factor
The real value isn't productivity - it's the reduction of mental overhead. Instead of using brain cycles to remember when to remember things, you can focus on actually doing them.
This is the closest thing we have to hiring a personal assistant whose only job is tapping you on the shoulder at exactly the right moment, every time, forever. The fact that such a system exists and costs little would have seemed like pure science fiction not too long ago.
Yet here we are, with access to perfect, automated memory, and most people are still trying to remember everything themselves.
Why You Should Care
In a world where we're constantly told to "build better habits" and "be more organized," FollowUpThen offers something different: the ability to build systems that work regardless of your willpower or organizational skills.
It's not about becoming a more disciplined person. It's about accepting that humans forget things, and building systems that work despite our limitations rather than requiring us to overcome them.
Want to try FollowUpThen? Send an email to "1hour@followupthen.com" or "nextfriday@followupthen.com" and see what happens. The magic is in how simple it is.