Gmail + Things + iPhone*

Having taken the plunge and moved my entire To Do Scheme over to Things today, I was curious to see what people were saying about the application on Twitter.  So I fired up TweetDeck and created a search that has been beeping away all day (a lot of people use the terms “things” and “tasks” in their tweets).

One particular tweet by user @whenderson clued me into the review I noted below and got me thinking about using Things with Gmail on both my Mac and my iPod Touch.

Nice review of Things @shawnblanc, but you might mention how you link your emails to tasks. It isn’t quite as obvious/quick as it could be. [link]

Gmail + Things is Pretty Darn Easy

Using Things with Gmail on your Mac is very quick and easy.  While you have the individual email you wish to reference open in your browser, activate Things’ Quick Entry panel and drag the URL of the email into the notes field.  Name your task and save.  Easy peasy.

However, with no cut + paste or quick entry panel to help you, referencing emails on your iPhone is not easy, but it can be done - just not in a straight-forward way.

Here’s What I Came Up With

Basically, I gave up on the idea of referencing the emails directly, instead I have a label with which I mark specific emails that I want to reference in a Things’ task.  I then include a shortened version of that label’s url in each task I create for an email on my Touch.

Step 1:  In Gmail, create a label for your Tasks.

Step 2:  Click through to the label’s page and copy the url for that label.  Visit your favorite url shortening service (I like bit.ly) and create a custom url that is short, easy to remember and quick to type.

Step 3:  When you have an email in you iPhone’s Mail app (set to Gmail, of course) that you want to reference in a Things’ task, simply move it to the mailbox (the Mail app uses your labels for mailboxes) which has the name of the label you chose for your tasks.  It will now be labeled properly in Gmail.  Note:  It will also be archived there, as well.

Step 4:  Now, switching to the Things App, create a task for the email and add the shortened url to the notes field.  When you access this task in Things there will be a url that will get you one click away from the email in question.  I also like to add the sender to the notes field to help make searching for it a bit easier if it gets buried.

This system isn’t perfect, but until we get cut+paste, it works pretty well.  If there is a better way, I would love to hear about it.

* iPod Touch too, of course…