Use Remember the Milk and Gmail to auto-capture Ideas Anywhere
I do a lot of teaching and preaching and writing, and often an idea will occur to me at an inconvenient time–that is, when I don’t have pen and paper handy. No problem, though, RTM makes a great idea-catcher! (Ideas can be anything, by the way, like “I need to do such and such of Friday”).
The best way to catch ideas is through your phone. I have a special drop with drop.io that I can call and leave myself a voice message. Any internet-based voice messenger will work, though. I call my voice-messaging service and leave myself a message with my idea. I have it set up so that anytime I get a voice message it sends me a little notification in my email.
So how does this get added to RTM? There are two very easy ways. I use Gmail filters and RTM’s awesome Gmail plugin. RTM lets you automatically create tasks from a Gmail Label, and Gmail in turn lets you automatically label incoming emails based on a set of preconditions. So I have Gmail set to automatically label all my voice-mail messages with the label “Task,” and I have RTM set to automatically create Tasks from any email with that Label. Presto: instant automatic idea catcher.
The second way you can set up independently of Gmail. Your RTM account also has an email address, so alternatively you could set up Gmail (or whatever email program you use) to auto-forward all emails of a certain type to that address, which would then get created as tasks.
Related posts:
- Getting Things Done with Remember the Milk
- Gmail Adds To-do Lists
- Multitasking Mondays: New Features in Gmail
- Get a to-do List in Gmail
- More Gmail IMAP Options
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
Hey Tommy – I have been using Evernote – using iphone – they also have blackberry, allows you to send yourself web clips, via the email address – to your evernote page.
not exactly sending it to my email but I can email webclips, photos, etc to evernote website.
keeps bunches of stuff in one place, voice memos, notes, web clips, photos etc..
ps: also using toodledo as you recommended. good so far thanks for the tips
Hey Tommy by voice messaging service I assume that is googles phone voice right?
I am currently using a combo of Todo the iphone app which works with toodledo –
they have some add ons as well and I was wondering what you were using to get your voicemail to covert to text. one app i have been trying is reqall. it send me email reminders etc – and converts to text but takes a while.
b
Actually, there is a web service called http://drop.io that I use. You can set up free "drops" of 100 mbs each. You can put anything you want in them: files, pictures, music, etc. They are kinda a combination of a blog and an ftp site. Anyway, every drop has it's own phone number, and if you call the drop you can leave a message, which is then converted to an mp3 file. You can subscribe to any drop to receive emails (or you can subscribe by RSS, twitter, etc) when it is update, so when I can the drop I get an email that I can then file as necessary.
I use drop.io for other things as well, like shameless self-promotion. Check out my personal "portfolio" that I have been using for the job search: http://drop.io/tommykeene
by Email
So does this mean if I call you a bunch of times it automatically adds a bunch of tasks to your RTM list? Hmmmmm