I knew that there was a way to capture tasks as they come to mind in Gmail, but I haven’t used it in a long time and had completely forgotten how to access the capability. It took me about 13.7 minutes to figure it out this morning! Since others may be having the same problem — and there seems to be a lack of “visual” help for this — I thought I’d take a moment to document my “experience”.
Google does give accurate instructions for accessing and using Tasks in their help files; however, this is an instance where a picture truly is worth 1,000 words. This link tells you to “click Mail in the top left corner of your Gmail page, then choose Tasks.” 100% accurate — but for the life of me, I couldn’t find “Mail” in the upper left hand corner. For about 13.7 minutes… 
For those who are more visually oriented, look for the WORD “Mail”, in RED type. Click on that and you’ll get the little context menu that lets you bring up the Tasks menu (see the graphic to the left). Click on “Tasks” and the little task list will appear in the bottom right corner of your Gmail window. It will look just like a Google Chat window.
I love it. Now I’ll be able to capture all those ideas that pop into my head when I’m at the computer. And since I use multiple computers throughout the day, I’ll be able to put them all in one place. I can also go back and assign a due date to it.
When you add a task, it automatically goes under the “No Due Date” category. To add a due date, simply click on the greater than sign (“>“) to access a screen where you can add a suspense date (and optionally add a note). I’ve circled the thingy you need to click in red in the graphic to the right (for the benefit of “visual” people like me!):
This is a great place to add a reminder about an annual subscription (for example). Simply set yourself a task to review the subscription a week or so before it is due to automatically renew, and if it no longer fits into your business plan, then you can cancel it before you get rebilled. Of course, you can also add it to your calendar — which, in my case, is now becoming Google Calendar.
I’ve started using Google Calendar for my personal tasks, again because I use multiple computers and Google is a convenient place to centralize all the stuff I want to capture. Outlook works fine for work tasks when I’m at the office (since I almost never bring work home), but I need that centralized place to store and capture all of my data, and Google serves that purpose just fine.
Google Tasks is a neat feature, and for those like me (who tend to be more visually oriented), hopefully this short little blog post will help.
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