GTD and the 'Waiting' Game

We received a question from a user that others may find interesting:

QUESTION

When sending an email to someone I want to create a task for my self that is basically a waiting for task.  My system follows GTD and the task I create is just another task with the Focus on @waiting for.  How does the Delegate function help me?

ANSWER

I cover this topic pretty thoroughly in the Getting Started Guide, so if you haven't taken a look at it, please do so.

There are basically two types of tasks that you could create:

1. A reminder task for you to do something in the future - the tool handles this by evaluating the 'Follow Up' flag in the outgoing mail.  If set, the tool will automatically turn the outgoing mail into an uncategorized task with a due date corresponding to the Follow up time specified.  It will not have a status of 'Waiting'  (Outlook uses "Waiting on Someone Else"), because you're not waiting for anyone other than yourself, hence the due date in the future.  This feature is set via Tools Options.
2. A reminder task that you're depending on someone else to perform.  This is what 'Delegate' is for, because you're asking someone else to do something.  A task will be created with the person in the To list specified as the Responsible and the status will be 'Waiting', because you're waiting on someone else to perform.