Bit Literacy - Mark Hurst [19]
2. Users can create new todos via e-mail, either for today or a day in the future.
Like the calendar, this is a feature that is at once massively important, not particularly hard to create, and practically unknown in other todo lists. Gootodo offers the ability to create dated todos from e-mail.
E-mail is a natural choice for creating todos because we can use it in so many different places and contexts, on a variety of different devices—much like the diversity of times, places, and contexts in which we create new todos. For example, if you’re in a meeting, with access to no device except a BlackBerry, and you think of a new todo, you can simply e-mail the todo in to your list. From work, home, the airport, or a streetside Internet cafe, anywhere you have e-mail access, you have the ability to add items to your todo list—for today or any future day.
This feature is important for the e-mail management method described in the previous chapter. Remember Step 3, when you have to move big todos from the inbox to the todo list? It’s as easy as clicking the Forward button. Many todos arrive via e-mail, after all, so it makes sense to allow e-mail to tie in to the todo list.
When it receives an e-mail, Gootodo creates a new todo as such:
the Subject line of the e-mail becomes the summary, or title, of the todo
the body of the e-mail becomes the detail, or body, of the todo
the To: address determines the activation date
For example, you could send this e-mail to create a todo on today’s list:
From: reader@example.com
To: today@gootodo.com
Subject: file expense report
Remember to include receipts for rental car and snacks.
The available e-mail addresses are easy to remember. Send the e-mail to today@gootodo.com and the todo shows up on today’s list. Or send it to tomorrow@gootodo.com and the todo will not show up on today’s list. Instead it will be completely hidden until tomorrow, unless you actively click forward in the calendar to see tomorrow’s todo list.
There are many other available e-mail addresses. The seven day names—monday@gootodo.com, tuesday@gootodo.com, and so on—send the todo to the appropriate day in the next seven days. Time durations work, too: 2d@gootodo.com sends the todo out two days, 1w@gootodo.com sends it out one week, and 6m@gootodo.com sends it out six months. The “d”, “w”, and “m” addresses can use any number from 1 to 12 (and the address is forgiving—the number can appear before or after the letter and it will work). You can be even more efficient by setting up nicknames in your e-mail program for the most commonly used addresses. Addressing an e-mail to “3d” would then send the e-mail to 3d@gootodo.com, saving you the hassle of typing out the entire address.
Finally, specific dates in the calendar all have their own e-mail addresses. Send the e-mail to dec1 or 1dec and the e-mail will appear on December 1. All 365 days in the calendar work, with common variations in the dates accepted. 18march, march18th, 18mar, and mar18@gootodo.com all go to March 18.
These addresses make it easy to let the bits go. You can send a todo to your future self and then stop worrying about it in the present, so that you can focus on today’s work only. This is especially significant because it reduces an infinity of bits to a finite amount that’s manageable within the time available. This method finally solves the problems of e-mail and todo overload.
A bit-literate todo list also gives users one other benefit: they become better at followup, a surprisingly big benefit covered in detail later in the chapter.
3. Each todo has a priority ranking within its day.
As described above, the calendar allows users to prioritize by date: relevant todos today and irrelevant todos in the future. Given the importance of prioritization, it only makes sense that Gootodo also allows users to sort the priority of todos within a given day. (This is not unique to Gootodo, but it’s an essential aspect of a bit-literate todo list.) Each todo is accompanied by a series