Our email inbox is rarely just an email inbox anymore. It’s effectively a running to-do list of meetings to get back to, tasks to complete, and things to be aware of. The list goes on.
Between emails that need replies and emails reminding me of replies, your Gmail inbox is now a glorified to-do list.
I’ve tried everything in my power to tame this beast. Be it folders, filters, or labels. I’ve even tried apps and systems that claim to help you achieve inbox zero.
Either they don’t work, or they require you to stick to a system that is unintuitive at best.
Long story short, my inbox has always crept back up to thousands of unread emails within days, and I end up missing things that actually mattered a lot.
So, I decided to make some changes. Primarily, that change was to stop treating my Gmail inbox as storage space and treat it more like a decision-making tool, part of my daily productivity suite.
And it’s surprisingly simple too.
I just started using Gmail’s built-in Add to Tasks feature. It changed my relationship with email and helped me separate my work from noise and gain more control over my inbox. Here’s how.
Email is ambiguous, tasks are not
Forcing the decision-making at the right moment
Contrary to popular opinion, the biggest problem with email isn’t the sheer volume. That’s manageable, or at least ignorable.
The problem is the ambiguity of it.
When an email sits around, it’s equal parts information and a constant reminder that you have to get to a task. That can be useful, but not in volume.
Moreover, every time you’re scanning through an ever-increasing inbox, you are forced to glance through an existing pile of emails that you’ve already mentally processed.
It’s not quite decision paralysis, but it certainly adds cognitive load on top of a hectic day. It can get exhausting even if you don’t consciously look out for it.
Using the Add to Tasks function solves this by forcing you to make a decision at the right moment. That is, when you open the email.
When an email arrives, I read it at once and take action on it. If the email requires immediate action, well, the answer is clear.
If it requires action at a specific time or date, I add it to Google Tasks directly from Gmail. One click, a due date if needed, and it’s out of my inbox.
The task automatically links back to the original email, so I never lose context.
And if the answer is no, the email’s job is done. I archive the email immediately or delete it if it is spam.
That might sound like a very basic way to handle a seemingly difficult task, but try it out. It’s hard to overstate just how much of an impact it makes.
My inbox is no longer a place that gives me anxiety. Instead, I have turned it into a productivity multiplier.
This quick decision-making process has also made my email inbox much lighter. What used to be hundreds, if not thousands, of unread emails, is now basically tackled every few hours.
Better still, I’m fairly confident that I’m not missing out on anything important.
As you start using the system, you also start trusting it more to be a productivity companion, which helps keep your inbox cleaner.
Why leaving emails unread never really worked for me
Tasks turns intent into something you can take action on
Before I started the entire add-to tasks song and dance, I used my email inbox with, let’s just say, the classical approach.
I’d leave important emails unread or mark them as unread so that I could come back to them. That makes sense on paper, but in practice it rarely does.
You see, an email inbox isn’t static. You think you’ll come back to an email, but by then, 10 or more have piled up on top of it.
By the time you go through the fresh emails, you have either mentally checked out or moved on to a task and forgotten about that bottom-of-the-pile email that was actually important.
Tasks fixes this by moving what you need to do from the email to a spot specifically designed for it.
A task has a due date and a sense of progression. It can be marked complete; an email cannot.
By turning emails into tasks, you don’t just reorganize your inbox; you also convert your intent into an actionable structure.
The approach also scales well. Be it a handful of emails a day or a hundred, the process remains the same.
Moreover, having a dedicated tasks app lets you focus on taking action instead of getting lost in incoming emails or searching for the tasks you need to do.
It’s just more efficient to turn your emails into tasks, and it’s built right into Gmail.
Productivity gains without the mental overhead
Using the process has made me more productive. Not just through efficiency gains, but by reducing the mental load of searching through dozens of tasks for actionable activities.
Inbox zero is a welcome byproduct, but not the goal here. If I’m unable to hit that, I know it’s because I have pending tasks.
If you’ve ever felt that your inbox is running ahead of you, try using the Add to Tasks function. It might just unlock a whole new way of working for you. It did for me.
