Feb 10, 2010

Remember, Remember the Event You Need to Remember

Summary

Gmail and Google Calendar together can help you remember important events without resulting in tons of unread emails spamming your inbox. How? That is what this post is for.

You Will Need

I must first assume you:
1) Have a Gmail account: www.gmail.com (bottom right "Create an Account >>")
2) Have Google Calendar: calendar.google.com (you should already have an account from step one)

Step One

Within Google Calendar, create a calendar specifically for reminder events. Once the calendar is created, add relevant email reminder events to that calendar. I use 1 hour, 1 day and 1 week reminders. The email address displayed on the top right of the calendar screen is the address that will be receiving these reminders.

Okay, the more commonly know side of remembering key events is started. You will still need to create events, and set them to repeat as often as they do.

Step Two

The second step is from within Gmail. Setup a filter for the reminder emails to be added to a label when they are received. Use "calendar-notification@google.com" as the "from" of the filter, and apply the label "Reminder" on the second step of creating a filter.

With the filter and label created, change the reminder label's color to something that stands out, like red.

Step Three

Finally the last step that makes this method really shine. If your not a micro manager of your emails like me, you won't want to delete this massive number of reminders one at a time. When you view the messages of a label, you can select all of the messages (just above the messages is the line "Select: All, None, Read, Unread, Starred, Unstarred") and deselect the few still relevant reminders. Hit delete with the unwanted remainders selected, and you have successfully reclaimed your inbox (at least from your own reminders).

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