How to keep track of tasks from email and Slack

Tasks from email and Slack get lost because they arrive in one app while your to-do list lives in another, and moving each one over takes effort right when you’re busy with something else. To keep track of them, you need to catch each request where you read it. You can do that by hand with reminders and flags, or let an app like Pippin notice the request as you read it and put it on your list for you.

Why do tasks from email and Slack get lost?

Most requests don’t look like tasks. They look like conversation.

• “Hey, can you send me the final deck when you get a sec?”
• “Quick question: which sheet has the final Q3 numbers?”
• A client email that ends with “Let us know which date works.”

You read it, you mean to do it, and then the next message pushes it out of view. Slack threads scroll away. Emails you’ve opened stop looking new. By the afternoon, the request lives only in your memory, and memory is busy.

The usual advice is to write each request down the moment you see it. That’s good advice, and it’s also the habit that slips first on a hectic day.

How to catch tasks by hand

If you want to stay with the tools you have, these built-in features help.

In Slack

• Remind me about this. Hover over a message, open the More actions menu, and pick a time. Slack brings the message back then.
• Save for later. Saved messages collect in the Later tab, so you have one place to look.

In Gmail

• Add to Tasks. With an email open, click the Add to Tasks button. The task links back to the email.
• Snooze. Snoozing an email brings it back to the top of your inbox when you need it.

In Outlook

• Flag it. Flagged emails show up in Microsoft To Do, so your inbox and your task list stay connected.

Habits that help

• Pick one place as your real list, and send everything there.
• Clear your saved and flagged items at a set time each day, not whenever you happen to remember.

What these methods leave to you

Each of these adds a task, but none of them keeps it current. When the client replies with a new date, the task still says the old thing. When you send the deck, the reminder is still sitting there until you clear it. You end up with three half-lists (Slack’s Later tab, flagged emails, your to-do app), and each one needs regular cleanup.

That cleanup is where lists fall apart. We wrote about it in why you can’t keep a to-do list past a busy week.

How Pippin catches requests for you

Pippin is a Mac app that writes your to-do list while you work. It reads the text in your open windows, about every 15 seconds, through macOS Accessibility. It reads Slack and your email the same way it reads any other app, so a request gets noticed when you read it, without you flagging anything.

Here’s what that looks like.

1. Emily asks a question in Slack. “Which sheet has the final Q3 numbers?” A row appears in Recents: “Emily’s question about the Q3 numbers,” with the summary “Emily asked which sheet is final.”
2. You get pulled into something else. The row stays in Recents. You can move it onto your To-do list if you want it in front of you.
3. Later you ask Pippin. In the chat: “did I ever answer Emily?” Pippin says no, not yet, and reminds you what she asked.
4. You reply. Pippin sees your answer and closes the row. It moves to the Logbook.

Requests that change over time get updated too. Say Ryan asks for the August invoices. Pippin writes “Send the August invoices to Ryan.” When he follows up asking for them as one PDF, the row’s summary changes to say so, so the row always shows where things stand.

Is it safe to let an app read your email and Slack?

That’s a fair question, and we answer it in full in what Pippin reads on your Mac, and what it never reads. The short version:

• Pippin reads text only. No screenshots, no video, no audio.
• It never reads password fields, common password managers or apps you block, and it masks keys, tokens, many one-time codes and bank account numbers.
• Your list and history are saved on your Mac, not in a cloud. To understand the text, Pippin sends it to the AI you picked: your ChatGPT plan, a Claude API key or an OpenRouter key.
• Pause screen awareness turns reading off for an hour or longer whenever you want privacy.

Which approach is right for you?

If a few requests a week come in, Slack reminders and email flags are enough. If requests come at you all day from several places and you’ve lost track before, let Pippin do the catching and the updating. For the bigger picture, read how to automate your to-do list, or see an AI to-do list app on a busy workday for a full day with Pippin. You can also start on the Pippin home page.