Your day to day
The daily digest
One email a day with what is there, instead of forty separate alerts.
If alerts reach you one by one as things happen, within two weeks you are ignoring them. The daily digest does the opposite: one a day, at the time you choose, with what is actually there.
What it carries
Why it works better than separate alerts
| Separate alerts | Daily digest |
|---|---|
| They interrupt when something happens | It is read when you decide |
| Forty a day get ignored | One a day gets opened |
| They do not say what is urgent | It is ordered by what matters |
Important
The digest does not replace alerts for urgent things. A rejected document or a case that unblocks does deserve an interruption; the rest can wait until tomorrow morning. The combination that works is few immediate alerts plus a digest for everything else.
Watch out
Generating the digest consumes once a day; sending it consumes nothing, whether it goes to one person or twenty. It is a fixed, predictable consumption, but worth knowing before enabling it.
Worth knowing
Set it for first thing, not end of day. A digest arriving at seven in the evening gets read tomorrow, and by then there is another.
›Can I choose what it includes?
Yes, and you should: a digest with everything becomes noise again.
›Does everyone get the same one?
Each person receives their own, based on what is theirs.
›What about weekends?
It can be adjusted; a Sunday digest rarely helps.
A real case
The situation
A six-person team receives separate alerts and nobody opens them any more.
What you do
- Keeps immediate alerts only for rejections and unblocks
- Enables the digest at 8am
What you get
They find out what is happening again, with one email a day instead of forty.
The situation
Somebody logs in three times a day to check whether anything moved.
What you do
- Turns on the daily digest with what changed
- Sets the time to when it actually gets read
- Leaves out anything not requiring action
What you get
Three daily visits become one thirty-second email.
The situation
The digest arrives at six in the morning and is read at midday.
What you do
- Adjusts the send time
What you get
The digest arrives when action is possible.
The situation
The digest includes everything and fills two screens.
What you do
- Leaves only what requires action
What you get
The digest gets read in full.
The situation
The digest arrives and nobody knows what to do with each line.
What you do
- Includes a direct link to each file
What you get
You act from the digest itself.
The situation
The digest arrives while on holiday.
What you do
- Pauses the digest or redirects it to the deputy
What you get
The digest reaches somebody who can act.
This article answers
- daily activity digest
- one email with everything pending
- too many alerts group them
- automatic daily report