I’m not a fan of to-do lists. Here I largely agree with the philosophy of Stack Exchange co-founder Jeff Atwood, who published “Everything” (great title) on the subject years ago. For her, regarding the things that are important, “I’ve never needed a to-do list to tell me I have to do these things.”

But of course, this does not mean that aiming according to what is not useful in the daily routine. Everyone has their own techniques here, and despite the enthusiasm for apps like Notion or methods like Bullet Journal, I use a somewhat strange system.

For example, I write my important appointments on the calendar, but if I need to set a reminder on my phone, whether at home or away, what I always do is simply: send myself an email.

I do it all the time, for things I want to do in the short term – that day, that week – but also to “share” with myself, for example, topics I’ve discovered that I think might be of interest to Xataka. In my case, there is no other reason to use this method, there is an additional reason: I spend hours in front of the computer and have a tab open on it forever: Gmail.

This idea can be extended to other applications; Sending WhatsApp messages to yourself is also very popular, but I always use Gmail for three reasons. The first is habit: this is the only way I can do it. The second is Google calendar integration, which allows me to move that reminder to an appointment in my calendar if I deem it necessary.

Third, and probably most importantly, Gmail has a “Snooze” optionThis is great and has been around for a long time. When I send myself an email, the subject appears in bold in the inbox, making it clear it’s waiting to be read, but if it’s a note or a reminder of something I can leave for later, I take advantage of it. I choose the option and postpone it until a date and time I deem appropriate.

Blessed “Do not postpone.”

Here I might perhaps ask Gmail to add a faster Snooze option. Currently, when you select this option, you get preset options to make this message reappear in the inbox “Later today (18:00)”, “Tomorrow (08:00)”, “Next week (Monday, 08:00)” . )” followed by the option to set a custom date and time.

Here I would prefer something faster, like delaying for example 2/4/8 hours, so that we can repeatedly postpone this message in these intervals, as well as set a date and time to our liking. This is of course my use case, and perhaps what would be truly ideal would be to be able to fully configure snooze options for each user.

All in all, I think Gmail’s Snooze option is one of the biggest improvements the service has received in recent years. Having an endless list of unread emails in your inbox can be a source of stress and postponing non-urgent things Take that little worry out of Inbox Zero.

Now forgive me, but I just remembered something pending. I’ll send myself an email via Gmail.

Image | Rubaitul Azad

in Xataka | My email was a mess until I discovered Spark