Albert Einstein said: " Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler ." Trying to look for tools to mark reminders and things to do will find a thousand applications that promise to make the task of making to-do lists as simple as possible.
But, without trying too much, to find one of the best and simplest tools to create activity lists and lists of events or appointments, Google provides it with Google Tasks (Activities) .
In reality this Google Tasks has not been released by Google as a tool in its own right but lives in other products such as Gmail and Google Calendar
Google Tasks is therefore offered as an additional gadget for these Google applications and can be used really productively and quickly to create your own agenda of appointments and events without any effort.
UPDATE 1: Google Tasks is now integrated in the right column of the new Gmail 2018.
UPDATE 2: You can download the Google Tasks apps for Android and iPhone
The most intuitive use of Google Tasks comes from Google Calendar .
After opening Google Calendar, click on " my calendars " and then on Google Task .
On the right side you can start writing a thing to do or an event and then, clicking on the arrow on the right, assign it an expiration date which will be highlighted in the calendar.
In Gmail instead just press the " tasks " button in the right column, to see the Google Tasks list open on the sidebar.
To insert the tasks just click on the empty space or click on the + icon and insert a new activity to the list.
At the bottom, in the activity window, there are 4 buttons: Actions, the + to add new activities, the trash can to delete them and the list that allows you to change the name of the list, create a new one and browse the created lists.
Actions allow instead to add indents to create sub-activities to a main one, cancel indents, change the order of tasks and print the list .
By clicking on the arrow next to an activity in the list, you can assign it an expiration date and add additional notes.
You can mark an activity as completed by clicking on the checkbox on the left.
Within a list, the activities can also be reordered by dragging them with the mouse or with the CTRL-up and CTRL-down keys.
In Gmail, you can turn every single email into a new activity to add to Google Tasks and then simply select one or more incoming or sent messages by dragging them into Google Tasks.
The same thing can be done quickly with the Shift-t keyboard shortcut.
Opening the activity window from any application you use (Gmail and Google Calendar), you will see the lists created with tasks and appointments, deadlines and emails possibly related.
Google Calendar, as seen in another post, can be configured to receive reminders via free SMS or email.
To find out more about how to use the calendar, I recommend reading the guide on how to schedule events with Google calendar and Gmail .
Whichever mobile phone you use, you can access it via your mobile browser at the mobile version of Google Tasks to view, browse and manage your activities, marking new ones and marking those completed with a cross.
Those who use Google Apps can instead access the address //mail.google.com/tasks/a/ domain .
Those who use Android phones can use the address //mail.google.com/tasks/android while the optimized version of Google Activities for Google Activities on iPhone is //mail.google.com/tasks/iphone
From the computer, on the other hand, you can browse to the address //mail.google.com/tasks/canvas to access Google Tasks in full screen on the browser and manage activities with more space.
You can also add a shortcut to Google Activities on the desktop using Chrome: open the address //mail.google.com/tasks/ig, click on Tools> create application shortcuts and choose where to place it between the desktop, Start menu and taskbar.
In essence, the strength of Google Tasks compared to other similar applications, is not so much in the service itself that, alone, is similar to many others but in the intragration with some of the most powerful Google services, Calendar and Gmail in the head, which they can be configured in various ways to optimize to-do lists and to-do lists.
In another post, the best online services for creating Reminders, to-do lists and online checklists for remembering things to do and websites for writing reminders of frequent activities .
