How I Use GMail Priority Inbox To Manage My Work
After a lot of different attempts, I have finally settled on a good system for using the features of Priority Inbox in GMail.
What I started out with as a goal was to start using the Priority Inbox as a way to manage my TODO list. I wanted something simple that I could use from any mail client ( my phone, browser, etc. ). After trying various ways of Starring, sorting, and other jumped through hoops, I have come up with the following. Hopefully you will find it useful as well.
One of the best kept secrets of GMail is the ability to create custom variations for your email address without having other email addresses. This is done by using the ‘+’ as a part of the email address. For instance, if my email address is scott@foo.com, I can create scott+test@foo.com. GMail handles this perfectly and passes all of your mail through to your inbox. This is especially convenient when you are signing up for things on the web and are not sure if you are going to get spammed afterwards. If I were to sign up for a Paypal account, I might use an email address of ‘scott+paypal@foo.com’. Because my inbound email from Paypal will always have this email address, I can now create a filter that tags all of my Paypal email with the label ‘Paypal’ and marks it read, or deletes it, or whatever I want to do.
Back to Priority Inbox…
So, what I did was I created a Contact record in my mail setup called TODO. The TODO contact has an email address of ‘scott+todo@foo.com’. This allows me to just type TODO in the ‘To’ box of any of my email clients and send an email to myself, or forward any email to my TODO list using the custom address.
Once I had the contact created, I created a new Filter in GMail called ‘TODO’. The rules for the filter were simple. If the incoming email was addressed to ‘scott+todo@foo.com’, I mark the email as Read and apply a label called ‘TODO’ to the email. Pretty simple so far.
The last and most important step was to use a section in Priority Inbox setup ( Go to Settings | Priority Inbox ) that allows you to define your own new custom section. See below screenshot ( click to enlarge):
I went into this 3rd and Empty section and selected my newly created TODO label from my list. When done, my previously empty section now looked like this:
Once configured, simply save your changes. You now have a new section in your Priority Inbox display that looks like:
That’s it! I can send an email to TODO from any email client and capture things I need to get done right away, before I lose track of them. Notice that this does not prioritize the list in any way. That is because I don’t treat TODOs with a priority. For me, I just work the list off. If I have a short amount of time, I pick short tasks from the list or make a judgement as I am reviewing the list. If I have more time, I will pick things that are more involved. Once I complete a task, I either remove the TODO label or just delete the email, depending on whether I need to keep it or not.
What’s great about this method is that it’s always right in front of you what you need to get done. Every time you review your Inbox, your list of TODOs is right there staring at you, reminding you what you need to get done.
Hopefully this helps you out, and gives you some new ideas about how to optimize your work list. Special thanks to Heath Oderman who found the empty section for Priority Inbox and devised a way to use it in this fashion.
Let me know what you think.
