I’ve been keeping another secret from you guys. I have a genius way to keep track of my ‘todo’ list. GMail is so powerful I don’t know if people really realize it. Thus, my mini-guide to making your own todo list in GMail. (Hmm, before posting this I realized someone else has done this same thing, but hey, I still thought of it and it’s still worth sharing).
Create a new ‘todo’ filter for your todo email address
Simply click “Create a filter” to the right of the search bar in GMail. The only field you need to define is the “To:” field which should be your email address with a +todo appended to the left side of the email address. In other words, yourname+todo@gmail.com or even todo@yourdomain.com (if you’re using Google for Domains). Click ‘Next Step’
Create a ‘todo’ label to tag all your todo items
This is simple, click the ‘Apply the label…’ check box and create a new label called ‘Todo’. You can also choose to do something like set the filter to ‘Skip the inbox’ in order to do some clever categorization. For example, all new todos will go straight into the archive as ‘unread’, thus you’ll have number next to the Todo label. You could use this to let you know how many total todo items you have. You could also use unread items to mean todos that haven’t been started. Or, they could represent the high priority todos you have. Anyway, those are just some ideas..
Send emails to yourself
Now if you ever need to add an item, just compose a new message to ‘Todo’ and off you go! What’s nice is I can now send items to my list from my cellphone and they’ll be available wherever.
If you live in Google products as much as I do (if I suddenly lost GMail and Calendar I’d probably be disconnected from my own life) then this is a great solution. Now I can see, at a glance, I have 5 “priority” Todos and they’re all right there with my email (a todo list in and of itself). I’ve tried a bunch of todo list products out there and this is, by far, the most convenient…
Hopefully this was useful to someone, let me know your thoughts or any other suggestions you have to tweak this…
Update: Be sure to use the RSS feed to it’s fullest potential as shown here.
Update 2 (6/28/08): Look into Remember the Milk as they have a great Firefox plugin to add your todo list to your Gmail page. I use RTM with my iPhone and Gmail and it’s a great way to have my todo lists all in one place.
Good idea. I will give it a shot. If there was only some type of way to prioritize. I guess you could make sub-labels under the to-do category.
I actually do a number system, so I do something like:
5: Email Noah, tell him he’s good looking
So I can search for “label:Todo 5:” and get all my top priorities. :)
Thats pretty awesome devin, didnt even know gmail had this capability. I’ll definitely give it a shot.
I do a similar thing, but I’ve called my label .ToDo, the . at the front means it’s always at the top of my labels so no matter how many labels scroll off the bottom of the screen I can always see it.
Good idea, thanks for sharing!
Hey, Devin that was really nice of you by providing an idea to utilize the GMail service usefully. I’d use this to keep me reminded of the never ending ToDo list. Once again thanx for sharing the useful idea with us.
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The Knowledge Haven
I love this tip. Is there any way to turn this Gmail todo list into an RSS feed that I could read from Bloglines (or whatever reader you want). That way, I’d be reminded of the todo again. The guilt would probably overwhelm me and force me to take some action.
Hi Dave, great idea I didn’t even think of that! All you need to do is subscribe to the atom feed for the label. For example: https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom/Todo – it’ll ask for your credentials and then you’re good to go!
I didn’t know about the atom-feed feature, thanks!
Very useful indeed. There is a lot of hidden power in Gmail, we just need people like Devin to uncover it.
Great Stuff! So handy for GTD.. If only I could use it at work, but I have tasks with subtasks and chains.. I can’t figure out how to do that with Gmail :) – Outlook is also useless
Thanks, Andrew. Perhaps double-tagging your tasks. ie: a search for label:Todo label:Project1 will yield all the sub-tasks for that project? In any case, glad it’s helped. :-)
How about due dates and having them come up first?
Nah, there’s no way to sort with GMail.
I like this idea, but I would like a way to print my todo list (yes, I still use paper). Any idea how to print an inbox view that is not all messy?
Perhaps the ‘basic HTML’ view found at the bottom makes it a bit cleaner for you?
Hi,
I am slightly confused :
Suppose, my current gmail email address is
dude@gmail.com then I should create a new email gmail account/address
called dude todo@gmail.com?
thanks
lee
Hi Lee, all you have to do is send an email to devinreams ANYTHINGHERE@gmail.com (include the plus) and it will still go to you. Meaning you can technically have infinite email addresses. When you sign up at the WSJ you could have emails be you WSJ@gmail.com.
I just set set a filter that any emails coming to: devinreams todo@gmail.com are archived and labeled.
Thanks for writing this up!