Productivity Need: "Deadline" tag in e-mails

At work, I use Outlook as my todo list. Almost every request or task comes in through e-mail, and I can send myself a mail for the others, so it makes sense to do so.
The only problem is that it's hard to organize my todo list by urgency. Something that is to be done asap might be pushed down in the list by other tasks that are not due for days or weeks.
So I was thinking. Why can't e-mails have a "Read Before" tag? That is, whenever you send out an e-mail, you have to indicate when (if ever) you need a response. Very often, you can provide a concrete date and time. By default, the deadline for an outgoing e-mail is set to "Never", which means your mail ends up at the very bottom of the list. Recipients could then sort incoming mails by urgency.
How this system works out will say a lot about how you and your coworkers interact with each other. If everybody sends each other "ASAP"-tagged mails, maybe your organization is just not ready.
Outlook probably won't let you develop this plugin, but how about Thunderbird? Anyone know if such a plugin exists?

Posted by cronopio at 12:44 PM, December 22, 2005