GTD and gmail using custom addresses
If you put a plus sign (+) after your gmail username, gmail ignores everything after it. I’ve been using this trick to automatically set up contexts, next actions, and projects.
Before
- send an email to myself at gmail
- star email apply labels (@work, project name etc.)
Now
The first thing I have to do involves a little time investment, but I don’t mind it for the clicks it saves me later on.
- create a new contact of your choosing that points to your gmail address but uses +SomeKeyWord. For example, I might create a contact, wtodo, pointing to me+worktodo@gmail.com.
- create a filter that does what you want for the contact you added above. In my case, I star actions and label contexts and projects. I’ll tell gmail to star and apply the label !Work to mail to worktodo.
I test this out by composing a mail to wtodo with the subject of “Fill out travel request form.” After sending the message, I notice it doesn’t appear in my inbox. What’s up?
If I show only starred messages, I see my “missing” message. Apparently gmail doesn’t put these messages from you to you+SomeKeyWord in your inbox, thus the need to show starred messages. It’s no big deal, really, since I click Starred to show me what I need to be doing anyway.
Using gmail’s search filters, I can separate contexts and projects if I want: is:starred label:!work label:ProjectName etc.
When I complete an action I unstar it and archive it.
This is a pretty simple thing to do, but it is really much more convenient for me than manually applying labels and stars to all my actions. Note that I don’t email myself all actions associated with a project; if you do that–as in the original GTD with gmail whitepaper–this trick may not be for you as you wouldn’t be able to easily identify the next action.
