Earlier today, Joe Kissel over at Macworld published an article called find email easily with flags. It's a great introduction to the idea of flagging something to tell yourself that you need to do something with it.

As Joe says, flagging in Entourage is easy: just click on the flag icon next to your mail message. To view your flagged messages, other than looking for the red flag next to the message, you can also arrange your folder by "to do flag status" or you can set your view to only show flagged items by going to the View menu and selecting "Flagged Only". When you're done with the item, click on the flag again, and it turns into a green checkmark.

That's the basics of flagging, but there's more there if you want to dig in deeper. You can set due dates for your flagged items. Select your mail message, and go to the "To Do" toolbar icon. Click on the disclosure arrow on that toolbar icon, and you can select a due date. If you're like me, you also need a reminder, so you can click on that same disclosure arrow to add a reminder date/time.

Flagging also isn't limited to mail messages. You can flag contacts in Entourage. My favourite is to flag a contact in my address book. For example, I've got my mom's entry in my address book flagged right now. That flag, for which I set a reminder, will tell me to give her a call to wish her a happy birthday.

Entourage also gives you a single view on all of your flagged stuff. In your calendar, you can show your list by clicking on the "To-do list" toolbar icon. I've found that this is most useful for me when I'm in my single-day view of my calendar. Alternately, you can go to your task list and select "to do list" from the list on the left side. My favourite way to view my flagged items is in My Day.

I think that Joe's article has one really important piece of advice: "If you have too many flagged messages, the flags lose value." He's completely right: flag everything, and your flags mean nothing.