I have this habit to send myself an email to remind me of something. I do this for everyday tasks, things I need to buy or things I want to read when I have some spear time. The problem however is that these reminders ‘get lost’ between all the other email I receive. That’s why I took some time to configure Gmail to manage this. I’ve been using it for a couple of days now and it really saves me time!
It’s very easy to setup, this is what I’ve done:
1) In Gmail, go to settings -> filters -> create a new filter
2) In the subject field, enter “todo:” -> click on ‘Next Step’
3) Check ‘Skip the inbox’
4) Check ‘Apply label’ -> new label -> enter “Todo” as label name
5) Click ‘Create Filter’ and your done!
Now write yourself an email with a subject like “todo: put out the garbage” and you’ll notice that Gmail will automatically list the mail in your todo list. You can do the same for a shoppinglist or readinglist, just use another prefix and label when you create the filter (e.g. “to read:”). Once you have finished the task you can either mark it as read (for your archive) of remove it completely.
You can now easily manage your todo’s anywhere & anytime using a webbrowser, email client or your mobile phone. For example, I found it really handy to be able to access my shoppinglist at the moment I actually need it.