Raise your hand if you battle this same task management problem that I battle. I read and reply to an email then forget to do the follow-up task that is associated with email.

Here’s an example of what I struggled with for years.A parent emails you on a Friday afternoon to request a meeting with you and two of your team members. You reply, “I’ll set up the meeting on Monday.” But when Monday comes you forget to include your team members on the meeting invitation. Does this ever happen to you? It happened to me a lot more before I started using the Add to Tasks feature in Gmail.

Add to Tasks in Gmail makes it easy to quickly add an item to your Tasks list and keep the context of the email connected to the task. The Task will appear in the sidebar of Gmail as well as on your personal Google Calendar. I find the combination of those two things to be tremendously useful in keeping track of tasks that are related emails that I send and receive.

Applications for Education

Adding an item to a Tasks list in Gmail can be a good way for students to set reminders for themselves about upcoming assignment due dates. While Google Classroom does provide an option to see assignments on their Google Calendars, some students might prefer to set reminders or advance the due date for themselves. Tasks makes it easy for students to create those reminders.

On a related note, Google Keep offers a couple of ways to create reminders.