I have to disagree with the first poster, zalkind, in that every email that comes into the Inbox is an Action — you have to open it and read it, then decide how to categorize it, archive it or delete it, THAT is an action. More on this in a minute . . .

When I first started using GTDInbox a little over two years ago, there was no ‘Next Action’ label. Instead, Next Actions were indicated by use of the Star. I found this to be very convenient and intuitive — the star is easy to add and remove (even from the Inbox), it is very visible, and, in keeping with the point of the star in the first place, it readily indicates the important nature of the email or it’s contents.

To me, both ‘Action’ and ‘Next Action’ have an important and distinct purpose. ‘Actions’ are anything I can do right now *or* any time in the future — they need to be done, I am not ‘waiting on’ anything for their completion, but they are not imperative. ‘Next Actions,’ on the other hand, I need to complete ASAP.

So every email, from the time it arrives until the time it is deleted/archived, is an action, by nature of the fact that *something* needs to be done to it and that something requires me to act upon it. I agree that forcing the Action label onto every new email would be a problem, because that would remove any previously applied Status (Next, Waiting on, etc). However, Gmail ALREADY provides a built-in Action status — when an email arrives, it is placed at the top of the Inbox, and it is highlighted. It’s placement and it’s new-message highlighting tell me that an Action is required (I need to at least open it and read it).

Personally, I would like to do away with both the ‘Action’ and ‘Next Action’ statuses. Instead, GTDInbox would FORCE new-message highlighting for every email that is not Trash, Spam or Finished. Next Actions can be Starred. Clicking Finished will remove the Star (as GTDInbox used to behave) and/or new-message highlighting and auto-archive the finished message. In other words, even if you open an email, read it, and return to the Inbox, the message will appear UNREAD, which is an easy to see indication that an Action is still required, without having to scan the labels, which can get crowded, for what type of action it is.

The filter I can’t do but would like to is something like this:

Show me all emails labeled with S/Action, for which its project (its label J/…) has no emails labeled S/NextAction (for me NextAction is strictly GTD, it is the action that pushes forward a project, all others are sub-goals of the project). So what I want is a quick way to review all actions of projects that has no next action, i.e., which project should be moved forward?

Would something like this would ever be possible in GTDInbox?

It is, in a sense, organized procrastination .

This could work two ways-

EXPIRING STATUS- There are some items that we know will no longer be important to us after a certain date- it would be great to have a way they could automatically ‘expire’ and delete or bury themselves. Do we really need all of those BORDERS REWARDS COUPONS we get every week- we don’t know if we’re going to BORDERS when we get them so we don’t throw them out, but we know for sure we won’t want them a week later when they’ve expired…

TICKLER STATUS- There are also items that we know we can’t do anything about- either in addressing ACTIONS or in REVIEWS- until after a certain date. For example- in my work I am responsible for reviewing supervision documentation for staff I work with every six months. It does me NO GOOD to review this issue every week- 25 pointless reviews of this item before I would see it at the right time to do something about it. Leaving it in “WAITING FOR” status is not a good idea because what happens if my colleagues forget to provide me with their semiannual report?

In the world of paper and objects we would address this with a “Tickler List”-

I suggest that these two time-associated functions would be a worthwhile addition to GTDInbox functionality.

Thanks-

Ed

Wrt “My dream feature would be to connect dependencies among tasks, as you can in a nested tree to-do list. its not possible for emails, but I dream. This is one way to set priorities.”… I’d love to hear more about how you’d like to use this for emails. Some examples of real use cases would be great.

Feel free to drop me an email about this – andym@gtdinbox.com.