It used to be that we worked from desktops. Not the type-of-computer-that’s-big-and-difficult-to-carry desktop; I mean actual, literal, top-of-desk desktops. It used to be that if we read something that we wanted to keep, we would clip it out of the newspaper or magazine we read it in and put it on our desktop.

Today, not so much.

I work out of my inbox. People send requests there now, so if I have a to-do, what better way to manage my own requests of myself than to send to my inbox. Keep everything in the same place. If I find something I like, while on Twitter or Reddit, I email it to myself. Or more often that not, I email it to Beth.

There are other apps to manage the clippings of the web. (Hey, that’s a great name for a startup. Eh, probably already taken.) Things like Evernote and Pocket, but in my opinion, email is prolific and universal. It works from almost any place, and I will never forget to check it. The problem comes in its ease of use. My inbox is already too full, so adding to the madness won’t help me get things done.

Enter Mailreminder

Instead of putting every message in my inbox at the same time, Mailreminder lets me choose when I get the message. It’s simple and it all takes place from any email client. It does work best with email clients that use threading (like the iOS Mail app, Gmail, or many others listed on the site.) After signing up, it couldn’t be easier to use and it’s very secure. The service is free, and collects only the most minimal information.

Here’s how it works:

Let’s say I find an article I want to read, but I only have five minutes before my next meeting. I do, however, have some free time in about two hours. I just email the link to 2hours@mailreminder.net and in 120 minutes, I’ll get an email reminder to check out that article.

What if I have a task that I don’t want to think about until tonight. But if I just ignore it, I’ll end up, well, ignoring it all together. Email instructions to tonight@mailreminder.net and I’ll get that task back on my schedule.

And that’s not all. Timeframes can be given in seconds, minutes, hours, years, days, specific dates, nearly anything.

I’m not sure which will be more useful, to use the “seconds” timeframe or the “next year” option. I really just want one that reads “not now.”