To kick things off, I use GTDInbox to very easily manage my email. Ultimately, I want to be a better communicator. I want to always reply in a timely manner, to prioritize certain projects or people, and be able to quickly send clear/insightful replies. And most importantly, I don’t want to be overwhelmed by email. I want to process things on my own schedule (rather than the constant interruptions and confusion of fighting the fires of inbound emails).

That’s me, what about you?

Oh, and I also occasionally use it to communicate non-email-originated tasks/files when I’m moving between 2 locations. But it’s not my main task manager.

I guess you pretty much pinned it down, Andy. To me, it’s especially useful to track my own outgoing emails and especially those I haven’t yet got an answer to. Further, It would be super if there would be an easy way to interconnect email threads that somehow belong together.

Two things that I would like added:
1. Mobile Access (in my case an iPhone app) that will allow me to see my tasks by context. Main reason – when I am at a bookstore, I would like to click on BOOKSTORE context and see all books that I need to check out, same with GROCERY STORE etc
Now i have to look in folders with the iPhone mail app, which included -Finished items

2. Integration with the google CALENDAR. When I have a task that has a deadline, I need to manually go to the calendar and put in a reminder, which then sends an email to my inbox (plus sms). It is automatically marked NEXT ACTION. If you could add a feature that will automatically add an event to the calendar with a deadline – would be great help. There were a few buggy extensions doing that, but they no longer work.

Thanks,
Tim

Amen to that! It’s one of our wish list features (actually, is it on gtdinbox.uservoice.com? I’m not sure – it should be!).

Tim, if I re-iterate the key point of your original tweet – you use GTDInbox+Gmail to implement a ‘pure’ GTD task manager (rather than just making email better).

(And Calendar is a definite, iPhone is on the UserVoice list).

I use it for pure GTD. For that there are two features I would really like to see:

1) Tickle an email (by putting a deadline, or simply a snoozing button (bring back to inbox in 1 hour/day/week/month)
2) Rename (i.e., change subject) of an email so it is listed with a clear imperative sentence (e.g., “Buy milk”), instead of the original subject of the email.

These two were already mentioned, but wanted to write them down my way, and also vote for them!

I like the idea of “tickle” as a feature/feature name. Andy – write that down.

I use the system to seperate out different projects. I have set up context labels with things like: phone, research etc but to be honest don’t often use these. I have use the reference heads to find things like: Agenda, Minutes, Baptism, Marriage, Census records (meeting based projects and genealogy based projects. I would like the status project to be more vital somehow. At the moment I have tomorrow,Next Action (under used maybe) Action, Someday, Waiting On and Complete. Realistically the only useful ones in the current format for me are Action, Waiting On and Complete. Tommorow doesn’t always get done tomorrow it’s just a way of seperating out the more urgent Action messages.

I would like the tickle feature mentioned above – with calendar intergration. For instance to message myself on the 2 weeks before the X meeting to issue the agenda for it. If this is not too advanced?!?

I would also love some of these features mentioned in uservoice:

To seperate conversations when people have hit reply with a not related task or message, one part is complete another to do and another part is unneeded and can be deleted etc

To highlight the part of the message that contains the actual task that needs doing so you don’t need to re-read a whole page of social waffle each time you check if you can act on it yet!

This is proving v.insightful so far…

If you’re using GTDInbox mainly to manage email, I’d encourage you to leave a comment – so far the GTD task managers are winning

And here’s a 2nd question for everyone using Gmail for general GTD – what is it that makes Gmail particularly desirable for task management?

Thanks Susan – so you’re primarily using it to manage general tasks? Or do most of your tasks originate in emails?

I use GTDInbox for e-mail management, and Remember The Milk (RTM) for task management. I think RTM is better suited for task management currently, and I need collaboration features (i.e. assign tasks to someone else), which GTDInbox doesn’t provide.

For e-mail, I use GTDInbox and a combination of GMail filters. I have a label for each project (i.e. “training.jia.nyc”), which I share across RTM, Evernote, and my file system. I use GTDInbox to help me manage e-mails across projects; I also use the Next Action, Waiting, and Finished statuses. I don’t use contexts, since I’m not using GTDInbox as a task manager. Basically, I see GTDInbox as a replacement for ClearContext (http://www.clearcontext.com/).

I don’t have any big suggestions, honestly. I do like the tickler and “snooze” options — ClearContext had that, and it’s probably the only feature I miss.

You are exactly correct. I collect data from all sources and send it to gmail. Then use GTDinbox to filter through.

I use GTDinbox primarily for handling incoming email with some “Compose personal” messages thrown in when I can’t get to Toodledo. Toodledo is my preferred task manager because it has many ways of creating and categorizing tasks, plus some great filtering and sorting options.

I also use Glabs multiple inboxes (I know that goes against the “inbox zero” philosophy) but I can sort to an inbox based on source/sender and it makes it easier to batch process mail when it is all of a similar context or subject.

The main benefit I get from GTDinbox is help me sort and track the Action, Someday and Waiting For messages. I would like to use more than one “Action” type, but in the past upgrades seemed to break user defined Action types – they disappeared from the UI and the messages were buried in the Archive – not lost but very hard to find.

Two things I would like to see in future releases – a defer to calendar option – set a date and time for a task (email) and have it go into GCal. Second – sorting. I know this issues starts with Gmail but is there any way to sort with older (and therefore probably becoming more urgent) message at the top rather off the page/bottom of the list.

I use GTDInbox for tracking both tasks and emails. It is my only task manager. I actually only use the buttons for setting labels on emails, and then I filter them into group using multiple gmail inboxes. I like that better than your gui . Why gmail? Infinite history, always backed up, available everywhere, already on my screen, good keyboard bindings, and of course full email integration. What would I like to see: more gmail inboxes.

I try to use Gmail as the core application to support all my email, tasks, projects and relationship management. GTDI is the main add-on I use with Gmail. Without GTDI, I wouldn’t attempt to use Gmail in this way. I also use many of the Gmail Labs features, such as Labeling and Quick Links to enhance what I can do with GTDI, but GTDI is the add-on that makes Gmail into a comprehensive system rather than a suite of cool apps.

I would say that the purpose of GTDI is to provide a comprehensive life, work, project and contact management system. I oppose the view that it is for email management only, because email is simply a means of communication. The principles of GTDI are based on GTD and would work just as well with postal mail, face time meetings or telephone calls. GTDI is an implementation of GTD and should stay with GTD principles of trusted In Box, Sorting, Actionable Tasks, etc.

From a real life perspective, I think it’s a mistake to limit GTDI to email only. It is more efficient to have a single, integrated app that manages all messaging, notes, planning, etc., rather than having to spend time maintaining two or more systems. Life doesn’t separate project assignments from tasks and meetings, or from reports and planning. These are false differentiations that made sense, for awhile, when work flow was more constrained than it is, now, and we had secretaries to type up the notes and reports. Today, there’s no time to explain things to a secretary so he or she can type. We need to keep the flow flowing, and there’s no time to waste explaining what we have done and are going to do to subordinates whose job is to type up reports on us. These work differentiations made a lot of sense in the days when records were kept in manila folders and executives went home at five. That would be fine in a single time zone. Not five around the world. For people who live in a 24/7 globe of productive, fulfilling work, a full integration of all aspects of life is necessary. We need to envision possibilities, make general plans, pull together teams, work together, keep track of it all, and reach closure so we can move on into another round of creation. We don’t think in terms of planning, delegation, implementation, measuring, etc. That style of work doesn’t work anymore.

If one finds (and don’t we all?) that most emails are task assignments or progress reports, then using them as such, rather than making separate, time-consuming notes and actionable tasks in another app, makes sense. It’s more efficient, just like stacking printed memos and reports in a manila folder is more efficient than writing an ongoing summary. By using Gmail’s labeling, it is possible to tag emails with appropriate projects and contexts. This makes keeping track of multiple projects, sub-projects, customers, etc., fairly easy. I can keep on working rather than taking a break from work to make notes. If a project is complex, so that remembering the next action step is hard, then sending an email to one’s GTDI action+ email address can keep one on track without having to duplicate the whole project/context labeling system in another app, and without having to break one’s work flow to check the other system. Phone and meeting notes can also be kept in Gmail with appropriate project and context labeling. Best of all, this is a flexible system, so I can quickly rename projects and contexts to reflect changing realities, and for quotidian work in which emails bounce back and forth, the project/context labels usually stick so I don’t have to spend time attaching emails to contact, context and project as I used to do with various CRM systems. Since I spend a good deal of time out of the office and need to deal with email as it comes in, rather than when I have time to sit down and process it, this is a huge benefit. When I get a few minutes to sit down with the laptop connected to a high speed internet connection (such as now), the work I have done on the mobile hasn’t been lost. I can move ahead rather than backtracking and wasting time connecting emails to projects and goals, as I used to do with some of the world leader CRM systems. GTDI is based on the idea that most work, task assignment, project management, reporting and other business/life activities are based in or best recorded in email. For someone who is trying to Get Things Done, this means that you can act. Planning, delegation and other functions can be fully integrated into your action mode. You don’t have to keep track of your life in multiple systems.

Recommendations:

Regarding calendaring and separate task systems, it seems that integrating with Google’s work in these areas would make more sense than trying to create entirely new systems. I have been using RTM rather than Google Tasks because RTM integrates better with my Blackberry’s task app. This may change in the future. I assume that Google is working on a task manager that will be as powerful as RTM, but I don’t know. If I owned Google, I would be hiring Andy as my first task and adding him to a ERM development team. But I don’t own Google. So, I would recommend that GTDI add better integration with Google’s Tasks, Calendar, and Docs. Docs, why? Because Docs provides an easy way to track projects and track them on a high level (Spreadsheets), create and record aesthetically formatted correspondence (Docs word processing files), make presentations and share or present them (Presentation), and collect data in meaningful formats (Forms).

The biggest challenge seems to be labeling across apps and enforcing consistent labeling in groups.

Best,

Peyton

For GTDI to move to the next higher level of total PERSONAL life mangement, it needs to add these basics as outlined above.

To become a collective or corporate tool, it needs to add

1. Collaboration and Monitoring. Google’s office suite provides a lot of collaborative power, but collaboration on the email level isn’t there. GTDI could use Gmail as the medium for collaboration so that various documents and tasks could be assigned and monitored.

2. Group Calendaring. This could be based on Google’s Calendar.

3. Group Project Management. There needs to be a way to share labels and to delegate among accounts without taking away anyone’s autonomy or killing creativity.

4. Reporting.

I’d say most of my tasks originate in e-mails and the desire is to have the functionality to remove my secondary task management program because it is a pain to have to keep using two systems. This sort of answers the second question too, the most important tasks I have to do usually involve other people – ie e-mail related, so it makes sense to include the task management system into the e-mail management rather than trying to move all the relevent e-mails into a task management system.

At the moment my pure tasks are managed by Monkey GTD which has some good features like the tickler calander and the ability to move the task on a week or month or year, brilliant for repetative tasks, once complete + month then it is ready for next time. My ideal is to integrate the tasks in Monkey GTD into my GTD inbox to have one whole overview. Time management seems to be one of the key ingredients to this, I can have a label for tomorrow but it is not practical to set one up for every day of the year…

An amazing response – and very rich with examples too.

One area to clarify – when you say that for you, it must go beyond email – do you mean more communication forms such as Voice, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., or do you mean more collaborative utilities, such as Calendar, Docs, etc.?

I think most collaboration would be with utilities, such as Calendar and Docs. Maybe Google’s Wave project might bring in some of the other forms of communication. For now, I think that making GTDI more collaborative in the sense of sharing tags and statuses would be a huge step forward. I have tried to stay away from using Twitter, LinkedIn and other systems for serious communication because they turn into side tracks from the email work flow. For instance, if someone contacts me about consulting via LinkedIn, I try to move the conversation into regular email so I don’t have to keep checking LinkedIn for messages.

We’ve previously considered the simplest form of label sharing – namely being able to transmit via email (we actually did this many moons ago, but we found an alternate solution for more robust pre-labeling).

So for instance, if I emailed you about GTDInbox, I could tell GTDInbox to include P/GTDInbox in the email body, so that when you received it, it would be automatically labelled P/GTDInbox in your account (and if you didn’t have that label, you would be invited to create it).

This is neat, but it has weaknesses.
1) If you use a different labeling schema to me (e.g. P/GTDI) I’ve no way of knowing, so we continue to irritate each other with ‘near misses’ in labeling.
2) Related to #1, there is no formally agreed label schema for a group. So, I have to wait for you to email me before I know what label you want to use. We can’t just agree in advance what to use.
3) Transmitting Statuses is uniquely problematic, especially around S/Waiting On (because my S/Waiting On should be your S/Action).

All of which point to the fact that we should be able to set up Labels4Groups, whereby we join a group, and upon doing so, inherit all the labels of that group. The labels are then kept sync’d as the group changes them.

One more little query though – what did you mean by ‘sharing statuses’?

I second both of gamelux’s ideas… a tickle & a rename option.

With regard to status sharing this is only relevent if the people you communicate with use Gmail. I would say that about 95% of the people I share e-mails with don’t. This in itself can cause problems. I have resorted today in sending a mass message out to all members of one of my projects to explain my system so that they can send me several short taks instead of wordy e-mails that cover several different tasks and also explaining not to hit reply when the new message does not directly impact upon the last.

It would be great (although maybe impossible?) if instead of having to provide instructions to people I could edit their messages upon receipt when I filter them. Somehow capturing parts of a message and turning them into taks rather than having to save the whole message together… this is probably nearer the Wave way of doing things although wouldn’t need to be as complex. The sender wouldn’t have to have their copy of the message in their outbox changed in real time (and you may not want to let them see that you have wiped half of what they have written as unimportant !)

Susan, a (possible) workaround:
There’s a Labs feature that allows you to quote only selected text in a reply to an email message. Coupled with the Personal Email feature, you can then split off tasks but that would still keep them with the original conversation. Unless, of course, you edited the subject line in your reply.

HTH

Sorry but I could only put down one of my about 30plus websites and blogs.

I cannot say what I do because I just installed it. I hope that it integrates my Google Calendars [have several personal, business, spouse] and tasks and todo’s in a better fashion than Gmail alone.

So far I will check to see if there are preferences as I see some differences in our Google Apps email but it does not look like the demo shots.

-Charles
Schoolgenius.com
Church-Mart.com
JoyfulMourning.com

Hi Charles,

We’re looking towards calendar integration in the future…. but actually as a new user it would still be great – if not better – to get your input. While things are fresh in your mind, what do you hope GTDInbox will do for you? What work/life benefits do you want from it?

Using Gmail opposed to other mail servers, creates a solid commitment between client (myself); and quality web use servers (Google), that ultimately insures a benefit of longevity; beyond the general short lived web services of the internet.

Apart from organizing mail into projects and contexts (I use context basically as a “social context”, i.e., where mail comes from, independent of ongoing projects) I want to be able to do some quick and dirty planning like putting tasks off for tomorrow, next week, next month, etc… An integration with Google Calender for this would be very interesting! I.e., to (optionally) remind you to check your “next month” tasks at the beginning of each month…

Also, I have added a label category for “People” (Ppl/) for a few of my most important contacts… Having a general function for this in GTDinbox that didn’t require a label would be nice since it’s getting to be a lot of labels (i.e., clutter) on some of my mails… A general feature would be to be able to create (sub-)categories based on gmail searches… E.g.,

From/Billy -> from:billy@example.com

/Daniel

As for using gmail – it’s mostly a very convenient way to access your mail in the same way from a multitude of computers, locations and devices… And also the search function and large space for email are essential pros…

/Daniel

I echo the calendar option or at least setting a date so I know something’s overdue.

It´d be great if GTDI integrated tightly with Google services as Calendar, Contacts and Tasks. Then, you could change your app name from GTDInbox to goGED (google Gets Everything Done) .

Andy…you’re the man.

I use Gmail because it’s always available and searchable. Am using GTGInbox to provide layers of visibility on the flow of ideas, people, opportunities and actions…that barrel through my work life. (I say work because I am still using another @yahoo account to segregate those issues, that stuff, into another stovepipe. That process works…because I’m easily distractable.)

Layers of visibility: 1. What are the business development opportunities that I can pursue? 2. What are the relationships that I want to continually engage? 3. Who are the people who will make me successful in current business?

What I want you to do (sir!) is capture the contacts that enter my world and let me provide levels of visibility on them … more light, lesser light, etc. A ribbon of visibility that makes some easier and “brighter” to see. Yes, I could use Groups in Gmail Contacts…..but something’s missing. Maybe I use the Context Label (just created a C/Bring Me $) for the emails that highlight the people-contexts that could enhance revenue.

Hi all, is there any funktion to transfere the GDTinbox settings from one Firefox to an other? Or for Backup the setings? Thanks for help Markus