Gmail + Calendar+smarts = Inbox November 25, 2014

I suck at remembering and finding ways to recall important emails that sink into the wild recesses of my inbox, and I don’t have a calendar app I’d rely on to get me a needed notification in my “natural, organic” current workflows.  Translation:  I forget, uh, “stuff”.  The problem is, I normally have a message in my inbox (or task in my calendar), but it has gotten lost in the jungles that are my inbox and calendar default views.  There is a lot of chatter in both. Obviously.

Enter Google’s new Inbox app (“church chimes play in the background”)!

Inbox does a bunch of stuff:  bundling, reminders, snoozing, etc., but the most important feature (to me) is how it puts priority messages at the top of your view and allows you to PIN them there, so they don’t fall out of view.  For me, this is fantastic (details below).  Bottom line, Inbox does what I need in this regard:  keep my important messages at the top of my default inbox view.  I probably check my inbox several times per hour during my normal work and home workflows, so it works great for me to be able to see pinned messages several times during the day. Works for me. Thank G-ness.

Details:  I got a message in my iPhone Gmail app’s inbox from a first-time sender that was really important containing a timed event that I wanted to attend.  I read the message moved it to my Primary tab and starred it.  I did not add it to my Calendar because it was less than 36 hours away from the event’s start time and I thought that might have been redundant. I know, I know – but work with me here, I’m trying to tell a story. 🙂  Well needless to say, I got a zillion Priority messages during those 36 hours and the valued message all but disappeared – and I missed the event’s start time. 😦

• “Why not just have searched for your Starred mail item?”  I forgot I’d starred it, and I actually rarely ever use the Star search for timely stuff.
• “Why not label it?”  I actually rarely ever use the label searches for timely stuff.
• “Why not use %AppX% that allows you to forward messages to your own email addy and it creates a reminder for you?”  Shut up. 🙂