Howto : use google's imap and mail application as GTD tool

Filed in archive Web 2.0 on November 7, 2007

Google recently enabled imap on all gmail accounts - a great move. Google already offered pop3 download of email, but that didn't really cut it. Imap offers full sync, which means that mails marked as read on your mailclient are immediately marked as read on the gmail site. That's what I call syncing !

But there's more you can get out of this. You can create a nice GTD application using a mailclient and gmail. Here's how.
If your mailclient supports it, you can setup notes and todo's in it. In my example, I have used mail.app on a mac. Some things might look and work differently if you try this on another type of computer.

Apple's mail.app features it in the latest version that is shipped with Leopard (OSX 10.5). If you set it up to talk to gmail using imap, notes and todo's are created on the imapserver.




A todo created here shows up like this :




if you go to gmail, you'll see a label (as google calls it) with the name Apple Mail To Do, and if you click on it your todo is sitting right there for you to be handled. As it is all in iCal format, easy calendar integration is there, but most important is the fact that you have access to your todo list from anywhere. As gmail isn't setup for it, you cannot edit the tasks, but at least you will be able to acces it and use it.





Last but not least, if you use a blackberry like I do, the todo's and notes show up there in the mailbox with options to put them in you calendar, creating a powerful tool right in the palm of your hand. I am pretty sure this will work woth smartphones too, as long as the mail applications support imap. There are, of course, also many other ways to manage and create todo's, this is merely a pointer towards the right direction.