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Tomer Ben David
Tomer Ben David

Posted on

We need a post-inbox era therapist

I'm devastated, i'm going to miss inbox so much.

Google inbox was my killer productivity tool, It was my twin task and time management brother.

I basically managed my life with it:

  1. Reminders together with emails in same inbox.

  2. Can change Reminders text.

  3. Bundling, oh god this was sweet.

  4. Repeating Snooze, yes, if something is important enough let it repeat.

  5. Location Snooze (RIP), but it's memory is in my heart.

  6. Google Keep Reminders.

  7. Collecting interesting ideas like a snap in my inbox, snoozing thus keeping my inbox clean, the ability to update the text when needed.

At first I was confused what is Inbox, why is it better than gmail?

But then it took over my life.

Not sure how i'll manage my life back post March 2019. I think there is potential for a new consultancy role "post inbox therapist" consultant.

My inbox got clean aka zero inbox only since I started using inbox instead of gmail. Whenever I had an idea i just clicked "add reminder" and added it.

Every morning on train on my way to work I opened inbox and checked my new mail, dealt with it or snoozed to some better future time.

A coworker asked me for something, no problem, inbox my friend was reminding me of it, nothing was forgotten, no mail, no reminder, everything got handled.

An interesting website, just click share to inbox, and it appeared there nicely with website short description and image, sweet.

Registered to a cheap mobile plan that would expired in two years? quickly add with a snap reminder to 2 years - 1 month to change operator, it would then appear in my inbox together with my mail and all is fine.

Remember to deprecated a server in two weeks? Add a reminder, it would appear together with my mail.

Got an important mail to reply due in 3 days snooze, to evening then reply comfortably.

Did I miss anything today? Open inbox, all missed mails, snoozes from past, reminders, events are there, one app to rule them all.

Some old mails and tasks snoozed at me, I dealt with them with love.

So i started looking into apps, into gmail, into task management websites, and nothing compares to inbox, no one offers the real bundle, the repeating, the tasks, the emails, the snooze.

A short list of apps I looked at since and nothing supplied the functionality and smoothness i needed:

  1. Google Tasks
  2. Gmail
  3. Asana
  4. KanbanFlow
  5. AnyDo
  6. TickTick
  7. Trello
  8. Various IFTTT
  9. OrgMode
  10. More...

But, I ended up using none, nothing does the trick, nothing beats inbox or even get's close.

So long google inbox, thanks for the time we had together, as it looks nothing compares to you, i'll always remember you.

Kiss,
Tomer

Oldest comments (12)

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andy profile image
Andy Zhao (he/him)

Totally gonna miss Inbox, too. The new Gmail has a lot of the features, but not all.

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bgadrian profile image
Adrian B.G.

I spent hours of moving my reminders into gmail (as emails) and trello (as todos). Still have not decided to use Keep and/or notes.

I will miss Inbox, but at least I will get rid of the 15s+ loading times.

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tomerbendavid profile image
Tomer Ben David

Yeah, I started moving reminders to gmail, but then I had a tendency to change the reminder text and fine tune it over time, now I lost that ability except for change "subject" which is possible in gmail but creates a duplicate mail entry.

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somniphile profile image
Lance Abbott

I will miss it more than I care to consider.

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somniphile profile image
Lance Abbott

Reminders in particular, but also saving web pages.

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jdkoeppen profile image
JustinK

I use Gmail mostly for browser time, because of Inbox's long loads, but on Android, man Inbox was CRUCIAL. Best email app for a mobile device, period. For my reminders/tasks I use Todoist, because for some reason Google insists on hiding their Task app under a bunch of other crap and I never know if my reminders are global or just for Keep/Tasks/Inbox/etc.

We'll survive this, but we don't have to like it.

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nektro profile image
Meghan (she/her)

We should make an OSS Inbox!

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noncototient profile image
Bo

Hereโ€™s my setup after ditching Inbox because of the recent news that Google is shutting it down:

  1. Notes - Bear - both iOS and Mac (costs $2/m for sync and custom themes, well worth it)
  2. Things 3 - both iOS and Mac (costs a lot more, but very much worth it as well)
  3. Spark Email - iOS (use gmail web on Mac)

Iโ€™m pretty happy with this setup, works very wel for me.

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ditorelo_12 profile image
Diogo Freire

I use followupthen.com for that sort of stuff. Closest I could do in companies that weren't in the Googlesphere.

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ilyadikman profile image
ilya

For personal usage :
I switched to any.do ( which also allows to frwd emails to do@any.do email and add it as a task/reminder.for notes without reminders ( shopping list ,recepies etc) I continue to use keep. Keep reminders when you have a lot of them get me in the mess.reminders in the calendar requires you to enter and review.anydo moments does it every morning automatically. For a work purposes I'm using kanbanflow.com which has built in kanban - probably Trello will do the same but needs to be costumize. Inbox wasn't perfect ( I missed the option to prioritize tasks ) but was in the good direction.

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy ๐ŸŽ–๏ธ

I'm with you on this. Inbox was the best thing to happen to email. Ever

Please sign and share this if you want to try and save it... is.gd/save_google_inbox

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Thomas Leon Highbaugh

APIs + All Your Free Time For 6 Months (or more) = the same thing

Do it!