A productivity tip to avoid forgetting to answer or read an email (gmail and iphone)

by Thibaut - February 12th, 2009

Since I’ve been checking my GMail email from my iPhone, I met the two following situations:

  • I read a mail from the iPhone then forget to reply as I intended to do,
  • I have a quick look at an interesting email but have no time to read it in detail – and forget to come back to it later.

While I ensure I don’t get tons of emails, I don’t like to forget about something when I think it deserves an answer (which is why I’m quite fond of Nozbe and a good part of what’s behind Getting Things Done).

I realized I needed an easy way to label things from the iPhone or the GMail web box, and I needed to be able to have these messages emphasized when I reach the web box, too. I’ve been quickly trying out various ideas to avoid that. Here’s what I’m using today, in case that or an adaptation is useful to you.

Step #1 – use a label that will stay on top of the list

I noticed that I could start the label with minus and that it would stay on top if I did so.

So I picked these two labels: I WANT TO REPLY and READ NEEDED, surrounded by minus characters.

On the iPhone, it translates into a two “clicks” operation to label (because the label is on top of the list) – screenshots below (from a public conversation):


Step #2 – use the GMail multiple inboxes features

Later on in my GMail box, I use the Multiple inboxes labs feature to show two panes with messages with these labels applied (no screenshot, sorry).

When reading or replying to a mail, I can then remove the label in one click:

Voilà – nothing fancy really, but I really made my life easier, and I hope it will do so for you!


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