Gmail as to do list?
In college, in classes where I was bored, I would write out my to do list on a sheet of notebook paper. I would then put a star (I had perfected doing the star outline --not the star with just five lines that cross eachother-- in high school in my Literary Magazine course. Perfected it to such a degree that they gave me my name on a star as a gift at our christmas party. ) to the left of the item on the list and then I would color in the star when I had done the item. It was a nice list because I liked stars and I could easily see what I had not done by the absence of color on the corresponding star.

Fastforward a couple years. I read this about using Gmail as a Journal and then this about using Gmail for taking notes and then this about using Gmail to catalog information. I decided to try out my own Gmail as a to do list.

Based on many of their ideas, but with only using filters and labels, none of the category+emailaddress@gmail.com. So I gave my self a gmail invitation and set up my to do list email.

LABELS:

• I thought of the categories that my to do list should have. My graduate courses, my teacher certifcation courses, apartment stuff, library stuff, food, errands, friends/family, etc. These were all made into labels.
  
• I also set up some Time Oriented Labels. "This week" is anything that needs to be done this week. This is what would usually make up my weekly to do list. I also put February, March, April, etc. for those things that I knew were coming up.
  
• My third kind of category is random. I have reading for books and articles that I want to read. I have blog for things I want to blog about. Links for links to read. Hmm maybe that is not necessary. Wishlist for things that I want to buy but don't have money for. Food was originally going to be for things that I need to remind myself to eat out of the freezer.
  
• My best label is Completed.
  

FILTERS

• I then made a filter for each label, so that if I mentioned library, the label "library" would be attatched. Pretty easy. Except that there is a limit of 20 filters. So I combined Friends and Family into one.
  
• I originally wanted all of the labels to make the email skip the inbox and be archived, except for the "this week" label. That would have been awesome but I encounted a problem when the "library" label said to archive and the "this week" label said to go to inbox. I wanted the inbox to win,but the archive won, so I lost. So the only filters I have are to attatch labels.
• If the to-do item does not include the word for the label, then I just add it to the bottom. Example: Grocery store (subject of email) Buy blueberries, milk, turkey. Errands this week. (body of email.) So I do have to remember to type in words that will put the email in that category.
  
• When I have completed the item. I reply to the email with the word "done" which adds the email to the "Completed" label and (as a part of that filter) stars that message. So just like my college to do list, my completed items have a colored star next to them.
  
• It would be cool if the completed label was incompatible with the this week label so the "this week" label was automatically removed.
  

Why I like this:

1. When I am signed into my Gmail to-do list I am not signed into my Gmail regular email, which, in theory, makes me more productive.
   
2. Stars are colored in when I complete my to do list!!!!
3. No more writing out to do lists manually and wasting paper.
   
4. Stars! Colored in! In yellow! The happy color!
   
5. My to do list is not washed away in a jeans pocket. It is viewable from any computer.
   
6. By looking at all the starred mail, I can see how productive I have been.
   
7. Stars!

Why I am not going to like this:

1. Logging in and out of Gmail all day. I think there is a way to prevent this. But I dont know about that and it might bring my productivity down.
   
2. I dont know about keeping up with all of the labels. If this does work, and I still only have 20 emails, a year from now I will want to look at February's to do list and unless I delete February from 2005, all of February, any year comes up. Deleting could get tedious. But not too bad because you can select a whole group and then remove the label.
   
3. If I get tired and bored of it.
   

- posted by Alicia @ 3:17 PM