“When Inbox was first announced, I instantly got an invitation to the service. Gmail was my default email client for years, and I was fine with how it worked. But I loved the idea behind Inbox that my email account could be something bigger. Not just a garbage can for ads and messages, but at the same time a to-do list and a functional system for achieving goals, and this was more than attractive.
I used to switch back and forth between Gmail and Inbox, not being ready to completely delegate my emails to the new system. But about a year ago, I finally made my final choice in favor of Inbox.
How often can you see boring speeches on the net that for someone the hardest part of their daily routine is checking mail. This is the most primitive way of communication for those of us who are online and connected all the time, and above all because it takes time. Every day you have to sort everything that attacked in the box – ads, reminders, package trackers … And all these letters that you would be happy to mark as spam, but you cannot, because they are somehow connected with work or you may need later. We are not bothered to send a letter if necessary, but fiddling with incoming messages is mostly pointless. You have two ways – either sort them quickly, or turn the box into a trash heap, where only new letters and search are important.
Before Inbox, I happily considered myself in the second group. A letter came, I checked the notification – and that's it. No folders, no tags, just a dump for what I thought might come in handy someday. The message threads on Google let me quickly find a conversation when needed – the only thing that mattered to me. Friends who carefully organized their correspondence would watch in horror as I search for something there. All of this was inconvenient, but considered a necessary evil, to which I paid as little attention as I could.
Inbox offered me a new way to use mail, and the first step was making it incredibly easy to clean up the trash. For newbies, the important thing is that search results for a lot of things are presented in a convenient form like flashcards. For example, there are 30 promotional emails organized this way, and one of them has a Papa John’s pizza coupon that might come in handy over the weekend, and I know I can find it later if I want to. I press the button, send all these letters to the Archive, done. If I see that I might need something later and want a reminder to pop up, I postpone the message. On average, I do this with a couple of letters per week, so the number of emails I have to deal with has grown tremendously. But it's much less likely that I will forget about these messages, and although I rarely use anything other than snoozing for a certain date, snoozing by location can be very useful for me when traveling for work.
But the most worthwhile feature for me is attachment. During the day, I attach everything that seems important to me, and I brush away or put off the rest. The last thing I do on my phone every night is sort out whatever is left attached, and postpone these messages if I know I'm going to tackle them tomorrow. At the end of each work week, I clear whatever is left attached, just like I do with a to-do list. Not that I actively strive for zero inbox, but often, going on weekends, I see exactly this result.
There is nothing special or new about Inbox. But since I made it part of the workflow, it helped me better interact with my own personal correspondence. I was considering transferring other accounts to Inbox, especially the work one. This system does not require much thought effort to enjoy its convenience, and for me this is the most important part of the experience. I don’t need to get stuck and think about what to do with emails, but I am actively working with incoming messages. I didn't receive more or fewer letters – but I think less about them, and in the end I do more.
Not many programs in my day-to-day life mattered that much, and it often reminds me of the time I switched to Gmail. The feeling that the program that works with my correspondence is doing a great job for me, and for a person like me it is incredibly important. '
And in conclusion, a question for you, dear readers, who also use Inbox. Has this service also changed your correspondence relationship? And what were the most useful features? Share in the comments!