A Creative Way to Manage Time Wisely

Running a growing organization is never easy. Day after day, I try my best to innovate and be creative in managing my time. It is still a work in progress.

But somehow I think I found a system and tool to manage time. The answer is Inbox by Gmail.

The problem with most of time management or to do list apps is that it is not integrated with email and messaging.

The traditional way of configuring my day is to list down my todos for the next day. While I am working on my current to do list, I am bombarded with a lot of messages, texts, calls and each of the interaction has another to do to list down. So what I\’d been doing was to open another app and put the reminder or todo.

With Inbox by Gmail, email messages can be a todo itself and can be snoozed.

 

In the example above, I made it sure that I snooze the message either tomorrow, next week or a specific date/time so that I will be reminded to follow up if the instruction was not completed.  Another great feature of Inbox is that you can also pin or snooze a note, reminder or a todo list.

Below are some tips in planning a todo list using Inbox so you can manage time wisely:
1. Categorize your todo. In my case I categorize my todo per department. I set all tasks related to finance and admin at 8am, operations at 10am and Sprint planning at 2pm.

2. With Inbox, there are two sections, the tasks under Inbox and tasks under Snoozed. Todos under Inbox are tasks due. So normally I am mindful with Inbox tasks/emails.

3. I don\’t usually show new email messages until my tasks due are finished. There\’s an option in Inbox where you can hide new messages or if you prefer to see them, you can always snooze to a specific date for reply later.

4. Inbox by Gmail is not limited to work tasks, I also put snoozed todos or reminders for my time to read, workout, write and spend time with the family.

I\’ve been using Inbox for awhile and I don\’t think I will be using a new personal task management app soon. I seldom miss completion of tasks or a follow up ever since.