One problem is that under today notification on horizontal bar it reads 0 in the bar.  However there are 2 tasks/emails due today. I have photo to show you if you give me email.  So there is a bug where items due today are not showing up as a number in the today pin I have such a 2, 3 or a 5 # so I know there are items due today. I have to click on today to see if anything is due today…..Notification is not there.

I realized from the number of batch labeling I did that it is not a given that I want due dates to sync with google tasks–too many sometimes to make it practical.  

However the CHOICE of syncing a particular label to gTasks would be awesome.  

will look into gmail results versus active results as I don’t know what you’re talking about.

But I’m becomming a power user.   Staying close to zero inbox now.

I’d like batch completing–check mark to remove an email from that due date once you open an email.  I’d like to be able to select several emails in a label and check them off with an action to remove multiple items as checked off simultaneously without having to open them one by one to check them off.

When I go to Active Results…the tasks/dates/labels are missing/empty.  So ActiveResults are not accurate for my AI (active inbox)….Bug?

Here’s my daily process:
1. Go through all my new email, process each one GTD style.  Though if it’s an action, usually I will give it the Today deadline.
2. Go to all my Overdue items and bring them all to Today’s deadline
3. Do as much in my Today list as possible during the day 
4. Leave the leftover stuff (I never finish the Today list) for tomorrow.

I’m still fairly new at GTD and ActiveInbox, and perhaps I just have too many things to handle at once, but I feel I’m very rarely getting into the other lists (Action, Waiting On, Someday).  I’m still handling Urgent tasks only, which seems to be against what GTD stands for.

ActiveInbox certainly helps me organize things and know which actions to do next, though there are somethings I think would help.  I put a bug out on the Active Results when you Group By Status, and also the time indicators on the right side aren’t especially helpful; I think they are times when the action was last changed.  Maybe there could be some automatic rules setup, like if and action hasn’t been touched for a week it goes into my Today list, or I get reminders about the other tags.  I’m not sure at this point whether the solution is more on my end or yours…

Let’s find out why ActiveInbox cannot find your active items:

1) Is it still “0″ even after you refresh Gmail?
2) What labels are on the conversation that you have actioned for Today?
(If you want, please send a screenshot of the open conversation to support at activeinboxhq.com)

As for GTasks…

Why do you want to sync the deadlines to GTasks? What advantage does it give you? What are you missing just using ActiveInbox? (Feel free to give an example of your workflow!).

And why is using Gmail’s own “Add To Tasks” in the More dropdown insufficient for your needs?

Hi Chris,

1) I’m intrigued – why do you use Today rather than Action? What’s the benefit?

2) And, are you using Gmail+ActiveInbox as your main task manager (i.e. sending tasks to yourself frequently), or just to manage your incoming emails?

3) How would you love to process your different to do lists? What do you feel would really work for you if you could have anything?

I’m interested in the automatic rules. Especially things like “You have X items in Action that are older than 1 week”. 

> Once you’ve set an item to Waiting On, how do you chase it up?

I have the Waiting On tab pinned and check that every other day or so. If it’s time-sensitive I’ll put a reminder in my to-do system (Producteev) or calendar.

> Do you do reviews regularly?

Yes, at least once a week. But my Action items are one of my Multiple Inboxes so I always see them.

> Do you distinguish between Action & Next?

Nope. I’ll maybe look into it.

> Do you prefer Gmail Results or Active Results? If not Active Results, why? Is it too clunky?

Usually just use Gmail results because they show up first. Sometimes use Active Results when the number of results is different.

> Would more reminders help? What kind of reminders? Are you tempted to ignore things that aren’t right in front of you?

Yes, very tempted. But not sure how to solve this. Maybe a small pop-up?

> Would you ever start Gmail into a view other than the inbox? (E.g. into your active items)

Probably not.

> Do you get overwhelmed by how much there is to do in your Review Bar?

Nope.

> Do you use Stars as well as labels? What for? Would it help to factor them into the Review Bar?

Stars used to be my to-do list, but I have almost completely stopped using them. Just once in a while I star a message to find it quickly in a long conversation of multiple messages.

Keep up the great work!
Alex

A quick thought on Stars:

Stars are extremely valuable when using Gmail on Android.  Of course Android Gmail allows you to add any label using the menu, the Star is easily accessible right from the Inbox.  When I check email on my phone, I use it to tag priority items that need to be labelled next time I’m on the computer.

I retrospect this is a very long post, sorry for that. Maybe there is some material for your blog in it tough.

Unfortunately I can not use AIB and Gmail for my corporate email because it contains sensitive data and I can not put that on Googles servers. (Yes, I know its stupid, don’t talk to me, talk to my boss. I curse Outlook everyday 100 times.)

On to my private email:

My biggest problem is one where AIB can’t help: if some Next email does not get done pretty soon (2 to 3 days) I get used to it staring me in the face and I forget about it. Its pretty stupid.
My AIB & Gmail setup is pretty involved now:
- I use AIB (duhh…)
- I use a Google Docs python script to attach actual GMail labels to Today and Overdue tasks. (http://getsatisfaction.com/activeinbox/topics/google_app_script_for_aib_markastoday)
- I use Gmails Multiple Inboxes with
  * my regular inbox
  * my the aforementioned Today and Overdue tags
  * my Next items
  * all unread mail that gets autosorted to some other folder than the inbox (mailing lists and such.)
- I use Gmails “Quick Links” Labs feature with a search on “WaitingOn” mails that have no deadline to be able to schedule deadlines for the important stuff.

This has gotten me trough planning a wedding and building (most of a) house just fine so I guess its a good setup.

As for your questions:

> Once you’ve set an item to Waiting On, how do you chase it up? Do you do reviews regularly?

Yes, via a Quick Link that shows me all my WaitingOn items that have no deadline attached.

>Do you distinguish between Action & Next? And how do you make sure they get done?

No distinction. I just have Next actions, when one Next action is blocking the other I make sure to do the right one first.

> Do you prefer Gmail Results or Active Results? If not Active Results, why? Is it too clunky?

I only use active results for reviewing the set deadlines, but for that I really like it. For the rest its too much hastle, with max. 7 to 8 projects underway and only using Next actions its not necessary to go so deep.

> Would more reminders help? What kind of reminders? Are you tempted to ignore things that aren’t right in front of you?

Well, I’m tempted to ignore even the ones in front of me. Reminders for the Next and Overdue actions during the day would be a possible remedy.

> Would you ever start Gmail into a view other than the inbox? (E.g. into your active items)

Nope. Multiple Inboxes are god-sent, would not want to miss them.

> Do you get overwhelmed by how much there is to do in your Review Bar?

No. My only qualm is that the semantics for the Prev./Next arrows change form Inbox to other folders so I have to think every time. One big “Archive and Next” button would be sufficient, everything else should require dedicated button clicking.

> Do you use Stars as well as labels? What for? Would it help to factor them into the Review Bar?

No. Please no (For some reason I really strongly do not like this staring and emoji stuff (yes, they reside in the same category for me…)

Sorry for the long post. It’s complicated. But AIB has made it WAY easier for me. Thank you for that.

I do the same as Chris — I focus on Today, so I can set things to particular days in the future and have them come up when I’m ready for them. Action doesn’t do that.

Once
you’ve set an item to Waiting On, how do you chase it up? Do you do reviews
regularly?

I either find it when I check on the project,
or I put a deadline on it.

Do
you distinguish between Action & Next? And how do you make sure they get
done?

I use Action to indicate things that I
really really need to do now. “Today” can get filled with things that get
bumped into the future, but Action is a priority within Today.

Do
you prefer Gmail Results or Active Results?

I usually use Active Results because of the
ability to distinguish projects within it.

Would
more reminders help?

Possibly something time-specific, like
evening or lunchtime. But it doesn’t seem like a high priority to me.

Thanks Alex, just two follow up questions:

Why do you move it to Producteev if it’s time sensitive? What does that do to help you remember?Do Multiple Inboxes make a huge difference? Would you still check Actions without it?

Once you’ve set an item to Waiting On, how do you chase it up? Do you do reviews regularly?
This is my weakness. I do need to find better ways of waking up sleeping items.
Do you distinguish between Action & Next? And how do you make sure they get done?
I do Next first thing every day. I do Action when I am scheduled to work on that project.
Do you prefer Gmail Results or Active Results? If not Active Results, why? Is it too clunky?
I’d prefer if Active Results was the default view.
Do you use Stars as well as labels? What for? Would it help to factor them into the Review Bar?
I use stars for important items that I should not forget. And as Adam said, it is good for synching with Android gmail.

Once you’ve set an item to Waiting On, how do you chase it up? Do you do reviews regularly? 
All of my “waiting on” items have a deadline, so I check on the due day. At the end of every day I either follow up or push the deadline.
Do you distinguish between Action & Next? And how do you make sure they get done?
Tasks that I email to myself get NEXT and have no deadline at first. Then they get another STATUS and a DEADLINE. When I finish the day, TODAY has to be at 0.
Do you prefer Gmail Results or Active Results? If not Active Results, why? Is it too clunky?
Active results, but they need to support color labels. Also Group by STATUS needs to only have ACTION, NEXT, WAITING, SOMEDAY. Others are not necessary.
Would more reminders help? What kind of reminders? Are you tempted to ignore things that aren’t right in front of you?
Integration with G Calendar would be a great feature, if I need a reminder for specific time. Wish you could make all of this work with iOS reminders that are location based.
Would you ever start Gmail into a view other than the inbox? (E.g. into your active items)
I PREFER TO START IN TODAY!
Do you get overwhelmed by how much there is to do in your Review Bar?
What is a Review Bar?
Do you use Stars as well as labels? What for? Would it help to factor them into the Review Bar?
Do not use Stars.

Hi Cch,

So you’re using deadlines because they neatly break up the workflow by when it’s due… that seems smart.

Although how do you select the deadline date in the first place? Do you try and evenly space the deadlines out?

Is there a way Deadlines could be improved for you?

And is there a better way that Actions could help you, perhaps by breaking them into smaller chunks? E.g. looking at the oldest 20? Or grouping by person? Or emails that have been 3 days since they were actioned?
I’m just aware that “View All Actions” as a concept doesn’t seem to work for you, and that’s a waste.

I do recognise the efficiency of only looking for actions when you tackle a project though: I do something similar, not monitoring *everything*, but drilling into a project or person when it comes up in my day. For this, the Gmail search box works pretty well (because it’s keyboard driven), especially if combined with the grouping/sorting of Active Results. (I guess the lesson there is that Active Results should help you “drill into” projects / people).

Another consideration: would you be affected if Statuses were disabled in ActiveInbox? (Perhaps as a Preference).

Hi Andreas,

This was a super insightful reply, thank you!

I find it very interesting that you use a Quick Link for Waiting On. I’ve often contemplated Saved Searches, but never quite closed in on it. Would it be useful for anything else do you think? What about if Active Results could easily show you emails without a deadline (A “No Deadline” section in “Group By: Deadline”)?

So, your great issue is habituation/blindness to items requiring your attention? I know that feeling. 
* We could have the powerful grouping/sorting of Active Results turned into ever-present Multiple Inboxes. It means they can’t be avoided, but you can still habituate.
* We could present a different selection of “Next” items – a “random five” so you could see them, but they’d never be the same. I think you habituate to the overall box though (not individual items). 
* Upon return to the inbox, it could give you a reminder that scrolls in, like “You have 5 Next items”. The animated scroll in could act as a nudge.
* You could start using Deadlines even more extensively. 

Which one of these would be most useful? Any other thoughts on what might have helped?

Thanks Tim, just an FYI, the “Review Bar” is the new top bar! 

Hi,
personally, I tend to find my way of living with imperfection in every software I use.
However, whenever the software changes, it’s double stress for me.
So, my personal request would be:

Please don’t change things more often than necessary, and try to avoid forcing people to change their habits — that’s always an unpleasant disruption in the use of a system that somehow works.

Particularly, don’t remove any feature (meaning “habit” or “property” of the software). Somebody may be using it in some intricate way you haven’t even though of, and their system may break entirely by what seem to be just a little clean-up.

Of course you don’t want to keep everything ever added — this would clutter the software more and more and render it unusable soon. So, as a consequence, please be conscious in adding things. Whatever you add will be used in ways you haven’t envisioned, and some people will miss it when you remove it again since it appears useless to you (and many others).

It’s many small “helper” features that make a piece of software valuable, and I’d believe that many such things have been suggested on your getsatisfaction site.
Please consider working on them, too.

Amongst them is the request to be able to select labels by typing their names. Since the AIB label-selection drop-downs don’t have this, I never use them.

Also, it would be very helpful if the HAB could remain permanently visible when I scroll down to the middle of a very long conversation.

For your questions:

I often use Status (Nest / Action / Waiting On / Some Day) and due dates as two independent degrees of freedom. Particularly, a date alone is good to bring something to my attention on a certain day, while “Action + Date” is good to keep something on the list and remind of its deadline.

Oh, please DON’T consider combining “Next” and “Action” into a single item!

Active results miss some keyboard shortcut control features that GMail results have — therefore, I seldom use Active results, although they’ve got their extra value…

Reminders are something for a calendar system — NOT for a GTD type system!!

I use stars for a more subtle prioritisation. How about sorting sorting lists of items of equal precedence by the star? But there are so many different stars, not just the coloured ones… Well, I’d rather you didn’t bother too much about combining everything (AIB and GMail stars). Creative users do this anyway, and may get in trouble when suddenly AIB fiddles with what they’ve somehow established for themselves.

As a conclusion — please consider attending to the suggestions we’ve all filed in the getsatisfaction facility..

Cheers!

Mainly because of the reminders (email/iOs notification). And because I have three different accounts (1 private, 2 Apps accounts). And yes, even without Multiple Inboxes I would check the Actions (especially on the iPad Mail app).

The less “scrolling” the better.  I want to be able to send, categorize and date from the same button.  This is especially true when an email has gone back and forth.  Having to scroll to the top of an email to set dates and cataorgorize is a time consuming problem.

Secondly, I would love to have color coding—let me choose the color for my categories—this would be especially helpful in reviewing what is due today as I could also see the catagories by color.  In gmail, I had accomplished this by using different color stars—if you could allow me to do that, that would be great as well.  

stars… I definitely use stars to indicate actions of various kinds.  And now that superstars have migrated from google lab to regular status, I use several versions.  As a label they are small and efficient and provide an excellent level of “visual integration” as I scan my email header. 

Thanks Ron. You’ve raised the opposite question, which is just as interesting: what do you use ActiveInbox’s Statuses / Projects / Deadlines for? 

How do you combine them with stars?

“Do you distinguish between Action & Next? And how do you make sure they get done?”- I don’t. I always set things as “Next.” But this is just how I handle GTD w/ my particular job (SysAdmin.) Often I don’t have a list of actions I can create w/ a project, just the next thing I know needs to be done. 
“Do you prefer Gmail Results or Active Results?”
- Active results. I like grouping by context, project or reference.

Hi,

Great to see requests for feedback!  If only more tool developers were so community-driven!

Before I answer the questions, I should say that I use ActiveInbox just for tracking e-mail based tasks, the actions of which generally involve replying to the e-mails.  Unlike some others, I don’t use ActiveInbox to manage all my tasks – I use ToodleDo for that (and have hundreds of items in there).  I find ToodleDo far more suited for my main GTD system, especially as I can use it cleanly on the iPhone/iPad, and it integrates with Google Calendar.  My main reason therefore, for using ActiveInbox, is to keep e-mails from slipping through the cracks.  So my answers to these questions should be taken with that in mind.

* Once you’ve set an item to Waiting On, how do you chase it up? Do you do reviews regularly?

I try to review periodically, but I don’t have a regular routine for it.  If there’s anything I urgently need to monitor/chase up I put it in ToodleDo which I am in the habit of reviewing regularly.

* Do you distinguish between Action & Next? And how do you make sure they get done?

I never use Next, only Action.  I find the overhead of managing the distinction not worth the bother.  Typically I don’t have huge numbers of items in Action anyway, so it’s not usually hard to see what I need to do next.

* Do you prefer Gmail Results or Active Results? If not Active Results, why? Is it too clunky?

I’ve never got into the habit of using Active Results, so I don’t tend to use it.  I guess if I had loads of items in the system (using ActiveInbox as my entire GTD system for example) I’d find the grouping in the Active Results view more useful.

* Would more reminders help? What kind of reminders? Are you tempted to ignore things that aren’t right in front of you?

I personally don’t like reminders because generally I find them too distracting.  I do tend ignore things that aren’t right in front of me, but equally if I get a reminder of those things, I’m likely to dismiss it and carry on ignoring.  I’d rather have something noticeable but unobtrusive on the screen representing the hidden things….and the yellow numbers on the Review Bar do this perfectly for me.

* Would you ever start Gmail into a view other than the inbox? (E.g. into your active items)

Probably not.

* Do you get overwhelmed by how much there is to do in your Review Bar?

No, I find the Review Bar really clear and usable.  I would like to be able to add custom searches to it though.

* Do you use Stars as well as labels? What for? Would it help to factor them into the Review Bar?

No, I’ve never really got into using Stars, as I’ve never found a single “yes/no” state sufficiently useful for anything.  Occasionally I’ve used them to indicate “Deal with this ASAP” but it never really caught on in my process.

However the other thing that hasn’t really caught on in my process is the use of “Today” in ActiveInbox, because I rarely get things I unquestionably must get done today.  And although it’s tempting to label things as “Today” if I’d like to get them done today, in reality at the end of the day I end up shuffling them to tomorrow, which seems like a pointlessly cumbersome of saying “Do this as soon as you can”.

In fact because I only use ActiveInbox for tracking/managing my e-mails (not all my tasks), I only rarely find a use for assigning a deadline to an e-mail, and as a result I struggle to get into the habit of glancing at the Today/Overdue boxes pinned in my Review Bar.  I think one thing that would help me would be if I could assign a different colour each box in the review bar, so if anything is appearing in the overdue box the number shows up red for example – the fact that red doesn’t usually appear there would make me notice it when it does.  Another reason this would make sense is that Today/Overdue have numbers that change “automatically” whereas all the other task boxes only change their contents when I explicitly take some labelling action. So it would be useful to clearly indicate when Today/Overdue has changed, so it gets noticed.

Other wishlist items, apart from the colour suggestion:

* Integration with ToodleDo (e.g. all ActiveInbox items get synced with ToodleDo with an  ”Email” context in ToodleDo)

* Integration with Google Calendar

* ActiveInbox app on the iPhone/iPad to replace the default e-mail app, which GTD features nicely integrated

* Option to auto-hide pinned items in the Review Bar if they contain no items (less clutter => easier to spot other stuff)

* Automatically purge date-based labels like D/D/6 when there is no longer anything assigned with it.  Not keen on the way they clutter up GMail’s built-in label management UI.

Hope that helps!!

One and one more thing…. keyboard shortcuts for assigning status/projects, and for jumping to various ActiveInbox views like “Action”.  Or perhaps allowing the user to assign keyboard shortcuts to their most commonly used operations.

Quick reaction to question re Active Results: keep it! It’s useful. The only suggestion I have re: Active Results is to permit sorting in the drop down by Context, in addition to by date.

* Once you’ve set an item to Waiting On, how do you chase it up? Do you do reviews regularly? I do review regularly and most of the waiting on items also have deadlines attached to them (either a due date or a “revisit at” this date).

* Do you distinguish between Action & Next? And how do you make sure they get done?
I do not personally and only use Action.   To me, separating Action/Next is sort of a GTD violation as I’m essentially ranking “priority” of items – if I have something that is time-critical or should be done sooner, I use a deadline.

* Do you prefer Gmail Results or Active Results? If not Active Results, why? Is it too clunky?
Frankly I’ve never used the Active Results tab – not due to any particular shortcoming of the tab, but because I haven’t seen a way to set it as the ‘default’ search tab and have always found the gmail results ‘good enough’.  Is there a way to set it as the default that I haven’t seen?

* Would more reminders help? What kind of reminders? Are you tempted to ignore things that aren’t right in front of you? Generally no, but it might be helpful to have an additional visual cue when there’s an upcoming deadline or overdue items (dismissable probably would help here).  I’m not sure if that would be a modal, notification bubble or something as simple as slightly different CSS styles to bring visual attention.

* Would you ever start Gmail into a view other than the inbox? (E.g. into your active items)
Yes, if given the option.  I would prefer not to see my inbox until I elect to check it, which for me is at regular intervals.

ugh! after spending so much time developing my routine using the tools it scares me when you say “over Active Results”. why? is it broken? is someone not happy with how it works now? Jochen wrote a nice reply below and I agree with the points.

I have a problem with assigning labels using the active inbox buttons when replying to emails. Sometimes there might be a particularly long message or several messages in a conversation before I assign a status, project or reference label. When I hit reply I find that the buttons to assign a label are above the first message, but my reply may be quite a bit down the web page. It is inconvenient to have to scroll up and down

ok got it.
Not overwhelmed, like the pinned statuses. Would love to pin TODAY ACTION and TODAY WAITING

Can’t say that I’ve noticed there was an option for Active Results. But I’ll be on the lookout for it now. I did want to say that I love the move to the top of the window. To the side, it actually slipped below my screen when gmail would first load, and as a result, I’ve procrastinated even going through my inbox and scrubbing it clean with Active. Now that it’s at the top, I couldn’t ignore it. I’m devoting some significant time today to tagging, archiving (or trashing) all the mail that I’ve accumulated. 

I just reviewed the Getting Started and I’m so glad you mentioned the pinning of the different statuses. I think, for me, that’s going to help prevent me from ignoring those messages I’ve assigned to those statuses. 

Can’t answer a lot of your other questions, as I haven’t used the app much. (Except that I think this answers your question “Are you tempted to ignore things that aren’t right in front of you?”) Your move to the top of the screen has already changed that, and I know it will work better for me now. 

I can certainly explain why I use GTasks alongside ActiveInbox and would prefer a tighter integration. The mini pop-up todo list is a really helpful nudge and I have it open constantly. 
It is possible to action and add to tasks, but I’d love the action button to add the email to the task list. For the most vital tasks I will often mark an email as actionable and add it to my task listThere are lots of mobile apps that sync a simple todo list to GTasks (I use Astrid on Android) and I can mark these as complete from the app. In my ideal world that would remove the status from the email too.

There’s also something edifying in seeing your crossed off tasks for the day. Sad but true.

Hello,

Hope these answers will be helpful…

Once you’ve set an item to Waiting On, how do you chase it up? Do you do reviews regularly?

- I don’t review these regularly enough – although I should incorporate this into my routine (my own lack of discipline). I do use “Waiting On” often, although for ones that don’t get a direct reply back from the person I sent it to, they can get lost – especially if there is a different message thread that is being used for that project/subject.

Do you distinguish between Action & Next? And how do you make sure they get done?

- Just in terms of importance. Next carries more weight.

Do you prefer Gmail Results or Active Results? If not Active Results, why? Is it too clunky?

- I prefer Active Results. I like to use the Notes feature and the Active Results will display this. That and it can organize deadlines and group by projects.

Would more reminders help? What kind of reminders? Are you tempted to ignore things that aren’t right in front of you?

- YES! I think the one thing that I find missing is time specific deadlines – which could be used to along with Compose Self to send reminders to myself. I’m aware there is another Gmail add-on that can probably accomplish this, although I’d rather stick with just AIB.  

Ultimate wishlist – this would be a natural language reminder like the old IWantSandy service that disappeared a few years back. (i.e. – in body of Compose Self email: “Remind me to call client back tomorrow at 4 pm” – or 16:00…)

Would you ever start Gmail into a view other than the inbox? (E.g. into your active items)

- I don’t think it is necesary. I like having inbox being the starting point to filter from.

Do you get overwhelmed by how much there is to do in your Review Bar?

- Not really – and I like how it is up top now. Although I would say the “Scheduled” tab is redundant. I prefer separate Today, Overdue and Upcoming. I know I can turn that on/off, although right now there seems to be a bug where Upcoming is tied together with Scheduled, and clicking Upcoming goes to Scheduled. 

My work computer’s monitor doesn’t have as wide a screen or resolution as my personal one, so the “Contexts” tab comes down to a second line. I don’t find too much of a need to use that on the review bar so I would like to be able to turn those tabs on/off as needed.

Do you use Stars as well as labels? What for? Would it help to factor them into the Review Bar?

- Not really. Sometimes on my Android Gmail I will as a way of alerting me to label it when I get back to the computer. Speaking of Android, any plans for a Mobile AIB?

Thanks for all the great work!

Cheers,
Kevin

Of course you don’t want to keep everything ever added — this would clutter the software more and more and render it unusable soon. So, as a consequence, please be conscious in adding things. Whatever you add will be used in ways you haven’t envisioned, and some people will miss it when you remove it again since it appears useless to you (and many others).
 
 
coffeec89  moncler

In general:
———–
- I played around with different approaches (from electronic to paper-based, from proprietary approaches to GTD) … the only one that always works perfectly is: “shut down the lid of your laptop and ultimately just go home ”
- I finally settled on the GTD method and try to follow it as close as possible
- Many times, I fall into the “someday” trap which means that I often achieve 0 Inbox, but “tasks” clutter up in “someday” which get only reviewed once a week. As the stack grows, the review process obviously starts to become more and more tedious
- I like the saying: “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing” – so focus is everything and you should try to avoid the over-engineering trap (with all of the feedbackers’ trying you to convince you that their feature is THE feature … including me of course )

To your specific questions:
—————————
> Once you’ve set an item to Waiting On, how do you chase it up? Do you do reviews regularly?

My routine process is as follows: open gmail, scan the top navi (“review bar”) and start with overdue and today. 2-3 times a week I check waiting on. As I use dates with waiting on, they are caught by “overdue” anyway. So no issue there.

> Do you distinguish between Action & Next? And how do you make sure they get done?

I have to admit that I don’t really understand the “next action” in the AIB context. In the “traditional” GTD process, next action would define a sequence of dependent tasks. I might be wrong, but I could not find this feature/effect in AIB.

> Do you prefer Gmail Results or Active Results? If not Active Results, why? Is it too clunky?

Active Results. I only switch back in case I want to use other GMail features. What I am really missing quite often is a “group by” option: by label. In that context, I am not really convinced about the “Project” approach. This leads to double labels in my case (e.g. p/x/y and x/y). I am not sure whether Projects really yield the huge benefit in comparison to regular labels …

> Would more reminders help? What kind of reminders? Are you tempted to ignore things that aren’t right in front of you?

I think it does not need more reminders. At the end of the day, task management is a continuous, tough and ongoing “job”. There is no silver bullet and many tasks are many tasks. In other words, more reminders, more magic does not help more.Would you ever start Gmail into a view other than the inbox? (E.g. into your active items)No.

> Do you get overwhelmed by how much there is to do in your Review Bar?

Yes. However, this is no AIB issue.

> Do you use Stars as well as labels? What for? Would it help to factor them into the Review Bar?

I use Stars rarely, but use labels heavily. Labels are THE mechanism to allow fast retrieval of more or less important mail items. An example: I use the label “Subscribes” to easily scan through all the newsletters etc. I subscribed to. Other labels are e.g. Business/Provider/PROVIDERNAME to get access to these mails fast (via a label search: “label:business ….”).

Cheers,
Christian

Hi,

I am a long time GTD practitioner, and have used many tools on multiple devices for the last 6-7 years.

I am a big fan of AIB (and a happy AIB+ subscriber). You guys did a great job!

I do however miss the following to practice GTD the way I need:

=== 1. Action+WF view ===

While I use periodic reviews of Somedays, of which I have hundreds, I review my Actions and Waitings every single day.

For that purpose, I need a view of Actions and Waiting, without Somedays. I had to resort to a browser bookmark with a filter that covers both, but the results are grouped by deadline, whereas what I need is for them to be grouped just be project, because during the daily review process I go over each project and review the dates, and not vice versa.

In principle, I only need grouping by deadlines in very rare occasions, and would be willing to sacrifice that feature for having by default a clear display of items per project. 

=== 2. Active Results improvements ===

Active Results is the default view for me, and I have to constantly click to switch to it, which is quite annoying.

Other usability issues with Active Results are the lack of colored labels (which are important for visualization), incompatibility to Gmail shortcuts, such as J, K, and problems with multiple selection.

Another major problem is that when using two levels of grouping the UI is confusing, and nested groups are insufficiently distinguishable from outer groups.

=== 3. Keyboard shortcuts ===

I need AIB to have shortcuts, just like Google-provided functionality.

The most crucial ones for me would be related to setting status, choosing a project, setting a deadline, and clearing statuses (the green V button).

I also need to be able to write the date in text, rather than use a date-time picker.

—

So thanks a lot!

Nice discussion. 

So I use AIB the following way:

See a mail come in, read it. I assign (Action/Waiting – those are only two i use) and then assign a date and project. Then I look at Today and Overdue and act on the mails accordingly. I never use Stars, or Gmail Labels – I only use Labels when I delete a project, as I havent found how to do that through AIB. I only use Active results when looking at To Dos or Projects…

For me what would be really helpful isa couple of things:

1) Fix the sorting in the To Do pages..so I like to see things by Action/Waiting etc…and I can do that through the filter on the RHS – buts its really messy, cos the first category is Scheduled – which is everything basically – then its Action, then Waiting which is good, then there’s All To Dos, then there’s Today: Scheduled, All To Dos and Today are the same view and just make things uber crowded…I would suggest

a) Action
b) Waiting
c) Unassigned/The Rest (mails dated for today but not given a To Do – with no overlap with previous views)

2) Pinning projects would be really useful for me, as although I have many projects on the go, there are 3-4 projects that I always refer to several times a day, and with time these change, so it would be great to have the option of pinning projects to the bar for quick access….

Longer term I would love to see more contact integration – so auto-detection of contact information with the mail and the ability to add to gmail contacts with one click, and then be able to assign a contact a status/To Do/Project to a contact etc….that would be cool. 

As for the specific questions:

Chasing up with Waiting mails – I use a combination of dates (so if i dont get a reply by today or whatever date, then i ping them again until they do )

Have never really used Next – I go back to the list and see what I need to do

Always use Active results as I can filter things much better there according to the AIB tags. 

Am really split on the idea of reminders. I dont think i would use it much. The date tagging already acts as a kind of reminder for me. My type work doesnt generally require hour by hour follow up, so daily is good for me, and thus the today view acts as my reminder system in a way

Prefer to start with the Inbox as is…dont like the idea of starting in the To Do list. 

Sometimes I am overwhelmed by how much there is to do. but that’s the point Its the incentive to get through things to finish they day with 0 Today and 0 Overdue

Never use stars anymore…dont see the point…..

Hope that helps. 

I also agree with Jochen Schuetze, about changing too much. We love the product cos we develop habits within the app that fits with us. If that drastically changes, newies will like it, and some oldies will eventually like it, but a bunch will leave. And that would be a crying shame.  So improvements based on current habits good, completely changing bad

Leo, this is very actionable feedback – thank you!

Christian, this is great and I’ve factored in your feedback – thank you!

Hi Kevin,

Ok, so the issue of “deadline times” is a question I’ve hovered around for a long time. My rationalised feeling is that “a deadline with a time is an event”, and as such belongs in GCal. The answer to which is more seamless escalation to GCal. Would that work for you? For what reason would you rather keep the time-reminder in email? 

Oddly enough, I’ve gone all this time without hearing about Sandy, but by sheer coincidence I came across it yesterday (the open source effort that sprang out of it). I do like the natural language setting of deadlines; and I think we could think about that without breaking anything else we have.

On mobile… I think it would be incredibly difficult to exceed what Gmail have done; which is why we stick to methods that work well even if you don’t use AIB. One thing I’m leaning towards is making your status prefix ! (instead of S/) so it’s always at the top of the label list, for fast mobile actioning. 

Andy

PS I hadn’t realised there was a prob with Scheduled/Upcoming, I’ve just fixed it!

This will be sorted this week

Hi Blake,

Don’t worry, I’m not going to make radical changes, and I’ll blog them first. They’ll be refinements to the process, and Active Results is definitely staying.

Hi Neil,

What custom searches would you want?

Jeff – I can do both of these things!

Hi Kevin,

So would you like Stars to be included in Active Results as a Status?

Boy does this one hit home.  I would love to see items that are Due Today, show up automatically in my inbox.  Otherwise I need to click on the lists and follow up on them anyway.  That fights with the priority of new emails needing review. (guess who wins)

Also, I like the active results better, however they lose the label colors, so I can’t tell a bright green ACTION with a red PRIORITY label, from a brown WAITING ON label.

I don’t use stars and couldn’t think of anything more irritating than pop up reminders.  I’ve got enough things popping up on me.  Don’t do that.

Hi Andy, 

I do use Gmail search for Action+Waiting, and I even have a browser bookmark that takes me there. The only problem is that data is sorted by date and project, whereas I only need it to be sorted by project.

I agree about Quick Links, probably it will be difficult to maintain backwards compatibility with that feature in the long run. 

L.

Hey Samer,

I’m struggling to visualise #1 but it sounds very important, can you elaborate?

Do you mean the “To Do” dropdown in the Review Bar? Or some other filter?

I could reorganise so that the “Scheduled” / “All To Dos” go to the bottom (and are excluded from Active Results – which I’ve already done); or they could be moved into “Quick Links” / “Saved Search” – a customisable list.

I’ve not really thought much about Contacts, it seems there are more specialised tools for this. Do you have some workflow in mind?

Andy,  I use projects religiously to sort my projects by job and I color code the projects using green shades for paid work, blue shades for probono work, and a few other labels to show special categories.  I do not use status labels at all (use various stars instead as discussed above).    As a “visual learner” the quick visual integration of colored project tags and stars is important to me.

Also, I don’t usually use deadlines for email.  If I have a hard date task to accomplish, I will put it on my calendar (with a link to the email).  For recurring tasks, I will add it a Remember the Milk task list I have as an add-on in Gmail. 

I did set up some “context” tags, but that became labor intensive.  The only one I still use is a “reference” tag. 

So, the bulk of my organizing has evolved to project labels and three different stars (red star for action, green question for “consider”, and red exclamation for “urgent action”.

I started with a full fledged GTD system using AI, but finally settled on this simple and more manageable system.  By and large, it has kept me out of trouble!   Just as a general comment, I would say the flexibility of IA to be able to meet a full range of user needs is important to your clients. 

Regarding stars, I do wish there was a little more functionality associated with them, such as the ability to segregate them into separate review categories such as “consider”, “action” or “urgent”

To address some of the suggested thoughts.

I am very bad at following up waiting on messages,if it is crucial on a time frame I date it instead, sometimes I realise I can go 6 months or more before checking. Some sort of review system would be great. Maybe you could choose your frequency weekly, monthly, quarterly depending on how you use it. probably a bit ambitious but if there was a way of prioritising waiting ons, they too can be fairly urgent, standard or one day as can actions…..

I try to use Next for literally the next thing to do and Action to be done in a week or two but this seems to be quite week for me. It comes back to a much earlier suggestion of sorting out the priority by project. A next action in a high priority project (eg Christmas Shopping) is much more urgent than a next action for a project for next summer. There was the suggestion I made ages ago, when a project is completable rather than ongoing ones it would be good to see visually how far you have progressed. To use Christmas as an easy example 20 actions in the project 10 are complete so visually the project is 50% complete. Of course you complete all 20 but then need to add some more so it could happily go from 100% complete back to 80%. That is probably idealising sorry but would really help me to have strong functionality.

I prefer Active Results as they are split into categories etc but miss the coloured labels that help things stand out.

Reminders would be good linking in to the weekly/monthly etc review. Some sort of way to be reminded of mid term actions to either bring them forward or move them back to one day.
This also ties in the suggestion of having access to view tomorrow’s items, A quick over view of what is coming up the next day is useful rather than having to rely on general upcoming.
This is ambitious but why not, it would be great if contacts could be managed better, you bring someone into your contacts because you are dealing with them over one situation but they are still in your contacts a year later, if you could tie people to projects/contexts better in some way that would be great so that you can have archived and active people ie for me context family – permenantly in my contacts: P/Holiday/2010 the vendor would be archived out of the way but still available and linked to that project.

I would always start in my inbox to clear this before doing any work.

My only problem with the review bar (other than the lack of tomorrow mentioned) is the problem you are aware of with incorrect numbers and today showing as zero when there is an action.   
 
I see no reason for stars at the moment, if they had a specific purpose maybe I would perhaps in prioritising the waiting ons, urgent – red, standard – yellow, one day – green for example….

Once you’ve set an item to Waiting On, how do you chase it up? Do you do reviews regularly?
Yes.   i review though sporadically.   a systematic way (like setting up a reminder to hit all waiting ons every x period of time)     would be fantastic.

Do you distinguish between Action & Next? And how do you make sure they get done?
No. 

I go through them one at a time

If you could sort it out so the OLDEST tasks can be @ the top automatically, that would be huge

Do you prefer Gmail Results or Active Results? If not Active Results, why? Is it too clunky?

I use Gmail bc not everything seems to get into active — like I have manual labels and filers set up that correspond to active, so when im on my mobile device, i can send a username+next@gmail.com and it hits next, or username+mobile+marketing@@gmail:disqus
.com for a project labelled mobile marketing…. but these dont go into active

Would more reminders help? What kind of reminders? Are you tempted to ignore things that aren’t right in front of you?
reminders like a Google calendar (with appointment times) hookup would be fab

Would you ever start Gmail into a view other than the inbox? (E.g. into your active items)
i rarely look @ the gmail inbox first.  I go to the oldest overdue, then today, t

Do you get overwhelmed by how much there is to do in your Review Bar?
no
Do you use Stars as well as labels? What for? Would it help to factor them into the Review Bar?
i dont use stars.  i see it as doing important, urgent kinda prioritizing which is 180degrees from GTD,,,

I love the way you all try to have a open forum and discussion on the functionalities of AIB.

As far as your questions go:

I do ‘waiting on’ as follows: I assign status and a deadline to it. When the deadline comes up I see it on the things to do today-list. So I can follow up on it.

I do not distinguish between Action & Next. I have a list of things I have to do today. That is what I make sure I do.

I prefer Active Results, however I sometimes have a hard time to read the screen. Because of all the header information in it.
Then I switch to Gmail results to have a more readable list.
I’d like to have my list with less header information but with sorting options to organize the list as I want to.

I am ambivalent about reminders. I find it very annoying when I am typing for example in word and Google agenda pops up and prevents me from typing.
But then again If I am not reminded I forget appointments.

Starting Gmail in the things to do today, will help me enormously not to step into the trap of starting with your email every morning.

I am ok with the reviewbar

Because my to do list can be long and I have a tendency to procrastinate. I decided to use the stars to remind me of the things I procrastinate. I have multiple inboxes. 1st my normal inbox. second the starred list. It is not ideal because I tend to read my inbox again. So factor them in in the reviewbar… Yes. It will keep me away from my inbox.

In day to day email processing what would help me tremendously is when the shortcut buttons as well as the compose action bar (with the date etc) would eithe be stationary or appear both on top & bottom. *That* is my main time waste right now.

My process: I use mutliple inboxes & process them as needed. I use the shortcut buttons all.the.time. Huge time gain.
To Do items go into OmniFocus for iPad.
References go into Evernote.
If an email has more info than I have time for I mark it “Process” and will come back to it later to get that stuff into Evernote.
If an email requires a reply I haven’t got time for it gets marked “Reply”.
Both Process & Reply are pinned.

I use Action only for email I have to act on *in the future* and date them accordingly.

Besides that I don’t use Gmail as my to do list.

I have Today, Overdue, Process, Reply pinned.

Your questions:

- When I set an item to Waiting For I right away set a date as well. At the right time it will show in my Today count.

- I don’t distinguish between Next and Action. Even if I would use Gmail as my to do list, I wouldn’t use that and would simply mark things action.

- I never use Active Results. It’s an extra click and doesn’t provide me with a view I need.

- Reminders wouldn’t help me; stay engaged with your list(s), review all the time — that’s the best way not to go numb

- No, I prefer to start in the Inbox view

- I used to star email with internal agreements on what that means but ActiveInbox is so much better

PS: the “group by” in AIB’s view is a bit of a mess/problem. You can have 1 email in “Today” but as soon as you “Group By” you’re numbers will claim you’re browsing through 4 emails…

I use priority inbox with the following 4 groupings:
1. Unread
2. Waiting on (S/Waiting On)
3. Some Day (S/Some Day)
4. Everything else
In order to take advantage of gmail’s priority inbox I had to limit the status labels I use.  I don’t use Action and Next.  Instead I created a new label type for Resource (R/Resource Name) and have all of my resources, including myself, listed under that.  If I need to take action on something, I do ‘s/waiting on’, ‘deadline’ and “r/myself’.   Once the task is finished, I click finish and remove the R/ label.  The R/ label also allows me to group all of the action items that I am expecting a resource to work on even though they might span multiple projects.  This helps me to cover all of the items when I have that person on the phone.

I use both gmail results and Active Results.  I check active results often to go through my Waiting On list.  Would love the flexibility to be able to group by label types (R/ as an example).

Don’t use stars much.

To correct a typo.  I use W (Not R) for resource.  I named it Who.  R/ is still reference.  Sorry for the confusion.

“I’d like to be able to select several emails in a label and check them off with an action to remove multiple items as checked off simultaneously without having to open them one by one to check them off.”

My biggest wish is for select all.

Would help to be able to see sort by combo of urgency (indicated by dates) and importance (indicated by star, action, or next).   Right now, I need to choose one (urgency) or the other importance) but can’t view by “what is urgent and highly important.”
Keep up the great work.  

Hi, 

I’m quite new to AIB (a few months), but I like it very much and I’M a happy Plus user. 

So far, I collected a few things I’d like to see in AIB. This does not mean that I’m not pleased. Actually you asked my opinion. :o) 

Please see below:

1.)  I started to discover the Active Result pane. At the first glance it was so homogeneously light gray that I was hardly able to find my way in it. So at the firs times I simple escaped from that pane. By now I understand that it actually contains more info then the basic Gmail result so I started to use it. First it would be very very useful to add more contrast to it (color labels and some visual lift to make it easier to read). Also, it would be nice to have more lines of the Notes attached to a mail. Now we have only the first row. Yes, it’s reasonable to save some space with it but – maybe a preference setting for this to be able to choose between more notes and space? 

2.) I really love Andreas Neustifter’s idea (maybe others’ too…) to add Due Today to Multiple Inbox. Now for some reason the search box shows “Deadline:Today” which is not a real search term in Gmail… I do not really want to use custom scripts if not necessary. Instead, I prefer to use an automatic way… if possible. BTW, at the moment I have the regular Inbox and Unread mails in my Multiple Inbox.

3.) I use Stars only on my Android phone and convert it into labels on my PC. But sometimes I star a mail on my PC too, when it is very important.

4.) I never (or hardly ever) use Next buttons (nor the Previous), but I do use the Finish (green check). That’s very useful. 

5.) I tried to color my labels in a consistent way but I have problems with the deadline labels which are created dynamically (and also with new status, reference or project labels created later). In Gmail the children labels does not inherit their parent’s color – unfortunately. Is there any way to specify a color for each special AIB label types to create them with that color by default? 

 6.) The horizontal AIB bar is very nice and I like it much more than the side bar layout. Great. The only problem of mine is that it loads 5-10 seconds later than the site and I always click a mail but it shits down the site when it displayed and it opens another mail or activates the More menu or the refresh button. It’s not really a big issue but annoying. Isn’t it possible to show a place holder for the bar at the beginning to shift the rest of the site by the exact height of the bar in advance? Also, it loads a bit slowly… 

Thank you for asking our opinion, I like your attitude. ) 

Cheers,

– Csaba Együd

Dear AI Team, I didn’t yet fully read or answer your lengthy post, even less so all the comments.

What I’d suggest is to try to keep the questions to a mimimum and insteasd spelling out your ideas visually with Balsamiq. I recently noticed you used it, only after I discovered the software itself! (Before I wondered how / why you made such a sophisticated mockup. ^^)

So I would make the AI users aware of Balsamiq (http://www.balsamiq.com/) and it’s 7-day trial period and let them draw up their ideas in there and link / upload them to this thread!

Hi Andy,

Thank you for the response. I guess I’ve thought of events and reminders as two different things. Reminders being instantaneous with no time frame, whereas events last a certain amount of time (30 minutes, an hour, etc.). Also reminders being more of a task than an event. I guess I could create a separate GCal for reminders, and thus the seamless escalation you mentioned might work. And if I set that calendar up to notify a certain way, that may work. I think the reason I thought it would be better to be in email is that I find myself working more in Gmail than I do in GCal – although I do use the GCal gadget lab. That plus notifications may do the trick. I’ll give these ideas a try…

I think you helped with my mobile solution. I’ve changed the S/ prefix to A/, and I can create label folders on my screen for the various actions. It may not have all the logic programming that exists in AIB but it should be close enough.

Thanks!
Kevin

let me just also mention I use active results all the time, but find them to be clunky because of the lack of color labels. Please add color to the active labels.

Once you’ve set an item to Waiting On, how do you chase it up? Do you do reviews regularly?
occasionally. If I really want to to ensure that something is evolving, I schedule a date. (in which I’ll follow up). 
Do you distinguish between Action & Next? And how do you make sure they get done?
I think that “Next Action” and “Skip” are more intuitive and more GTD.
Do you prefer Gmail Results or Active Results? If not Active Results, why? Is it too clunky?
ACtive !

The Scheduled View could be improved to order by date due. Also the upcoming ammount of days should be user configurable.
Would more reminders help? What kind of reminders? Are you tempted to ignore things that aren’t right in front of you?
Maybe some coloring in the bar when there are items overdue or for today.

Would you ever start Gmail into a view other than the inbox? (E.g. into your active items)
Not my case
Do you get overwhelmed by how much there is to do in your Review Bar?
No.
Do you use Stars as well as labels? What for? Would it help to factor them into the Review Bar?
Don’t use
Don’t Use.

might be unrelated and doesnt really answer your post request but is their a way to “label” my contacts in a similar way we go our email?…sometimes we need just a simple visual reminder to contact or follow up with a contact…labeling the contact to display in the horizontal bar would be a tremendous help.

Our university moved from Outlook to Google mail in September, and AIB has been an absolute life-safer; moreover, I am now much more efficient in keeping on top of e-mail with AIB than through Outlook. 

I have Today/Overdue/Waiting For all pinned on the review bar. I have a Priority Inbox view set up for ‘Next’, ‘Action’, ‘Unread’ and ‘Everything Else’; each is set only to display when there’s email in them. I keep ‘Next’ expanded, but only expand ‘Action’ when I’ve worked through my ‘Next’ items and want to dip into the ‘Action’ items.

I process incoming email in batches, assigning statuses. I either use dates in conjunction with a status (‘Action’ and date means I intend to reply this week, but I need to have done so by X date; ‘Waiting For’ and date means chase this up on this date), or just on its own which is used as a simple task manager (do the task in this e-mail on this date) or reminder (this person is visiting on this date). I do use the Note field, but never the Reply to Self.

I don’t pin projects in the review bar, but maybe I should.
Once you’ve set an item to Waiting On, how do you chase it up? Do you do reviews regularly?
It’s pinned, so I can easily review what I’m waiting on. I review at least once a week, but usually every two days or so.
Do you distinguish between Action & Next? And how do you make sure they get done?
I follow your advice! In other words, ‘Next’ means this needs to be dealt with in the next day or so; ‘Action’ means ‘in the next week’. I use ‘Someday’ for everything else, and that gets reviewed weekly.
Do you prefer Gmail Results or Active Results? If not Active Results, why? Is it too clunky?
If I’m searching for a specific email, then Gmail results is fine. If I want to review a project or a status, then Active Results. I’d like the option to be able to order the Active Results, though, by date.
Would more reminders help? What kind of reminders? Are you tempted to ignore things that aren’t right in front of you?
The pinned ‘Today’ and ‘Overdue’ act as immediate visual reminders, as does the list of items in the ‘Next’ part of the inbox. It might be useful to have some kind of ‘this email has been in ‘Next’ for more than 3 days’ or ‘in ‘Action’ for more than 7 days’ or ‘nothing has been actioned/processed in this project for 7 days’.
Would you ever start Gmail into a view other than the inbox? (E.g. into your active items)
No, I use Priority Inbox.
Do you get overwhelmed by how much there is to do in your Review Bar?
No. Or at least not because of AIB!
Do you use Stars as well as labels? What for? Would it help to factor them into the Review Bar?
No. 

A short note about the stars:
I’ve just discovered that I can use them to point myself to one or more individual messages within a long conversation. This way, I find them very useful, but wouldn’t want them to be affected, or even just used, by AIB.

I’m analysing personal organisation, project management, GTD for years.
Problems encountered:
- use of to many tools (personal lists, project lists, excel, ms project,doc management system…)
- everyone uses his mail application the most and every other list is a wast of time
- keeping the mailbox organised when receiving 200 mails a day personal mailbox seen by organisation as team mailbox e.g)
- having hondreds of little projects
Permanent question:
- can I manage everything from my mailbox
Answer:
- I’m for the first time having a solution that is going in that direction: google + activeinbox (the sum of both!) because google has now the total tooling (social media, doc management, calendar,…)
Positive elements:
- combination of possibilities
- I work with the whole team with projecttagging (also on server, documents, …): mail =P/
- I work with the whole team with user tagging (3initials per member): mail =U/
- to work quickly: starred (google) from my mobile, tagged on my fixed pc on active, but tagged/labeled with google shortcuts what goes very quickly
- I added decision, strategic doc, doc, comment, milestones, meeting, meeting report statusses (supplementary project statusses). I change labels from todo (urgent, action, waiting) to keep (decision, doc) or to closed or delete.
- I use selfcomposed mails with wel selected subjects for todo’s in a project
- I like the google overview for general mail review
- Active overview is used for project overview: ideal no excels, no projectmanagement just by labeling the project overview is there
conclusion: I am a user and my overview is for personal organisation (keeping the actions as clean as possible), the other users is for project management. You can have weekly personal reviews (like GTD says), and weekly or monthly project reviews.
In that way active is a better addon than google tasks
Possible improvements:
- I don’t use references e.g for meeting because they are not in the active overview?
- Using nice colors for the statusses urgent-red, action-orange, decision-blew, closed-green or even better configurable (or using google coloring labels)
- I would like to overview easily what is not yet handled. In google we cannot search on notstarred! A no-deadline overview is interesting, but also a non-statussed even when read (could be a long list but no problem)
- The advantage of google tasks is you can see it in calendar. So seeing the active deadlines in a google calendar?
Dream:
- sharing the overviews with the team members
- I could use google gmail sharing and organise the mails there with active
- or active could foresee also an excel export of the overviews? And e.g. also a total project export = general overview in excel with users and actions
- The ‘ideal idea’ is that all team members could share mails and the labels of active and that we cad make a project active overview on own and shared mails
(look for this kind of sharing and tagging functionalities to the software product everynote, but this is not mailbased)
Remark: this is a whole in the market because I do not know any project software who has those sum of functionalities.

The single thing for me that is missing (which we had quite some time ago) is the ability to filter the display from the Today or Status or Projects list by  Status or Project or Tag.

What I mean is that I may want to filter a project by tag (say one of my staff) so all I see in the search results are the relevant ones for that project assigned to that staff member.

Now I get too many results in active and it is cumbersome to sift through them.

Thanks,

Keep doing guys! You are doing indeed great job!

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I suspect that those of us that need this the most all need to be “tapped on the shoulder” to remember to get things done.  The standard GMAIL “priority” setting only encourages working on urgent items — but now my computer is deciding what is urgent.

A visual, softly animated reminder of due/overdue items and a one click display of those items would be great.

I have found that too many categories of importance don’t really do me much good, and I don’t distinguish between Action and “Next”.

If an item is to be “Done” – then the question is when – and AIB helps with that with due dates
If an item is to be “Delegated” — then I think AIB is a bit more obtuse on this  - I’m not drawn to use “Waiting on” to do this.  Most Delegation is done by forwarding.  When I forward, the management question is “do I need to set a reminder on this if I have not received a response by a certain date?”  Perhaps connecting “Waiting On” status with Forward and/or Reply actions?  When I forward or reply, I have the option of setting a reminder date (i.e., Waiting On status with date)

About following up my waiting on items.. 
I use this script here:
http://blog.dlux.hu/2011/09/gmail-snooze-updated.htm
I use star instead of next and I use action to keep a list on things to do…
Gmail results, because I am used to the shortkey gl (go label) is there such shortkey for the active results too?
The above script drops all the mails  I need to deal with into the inbox. Currently I do not feel the need for any further notification.
I always use the active inbox view except for the time when I come back from holiday. Then it is important first…