Third Time's a Charm

I migrated to Microsoft Outlook in the early days. It took me three tries to get there, though. There were all these new ideas to wrap my head around - different ways of doing things, different ways of handling events, different ways of handling email.

I went back-and-forth between the new and exciting Outlook (this must have been around 1995) and whatever I was using before  (it's lost in the dustbin of my mind so I can't even remember what it was - probably a DayTimer).

The point of this is that I would go back and forth several times before it finally stuck, and was able to move forward with the new platform. This caused me to waste all kinds of time as I would completely move over to the new system, only to move back to the old one when I discovered I couldn't do something (or thought I couldn't do something).

This time it's Inbox by Google. I was an early adopter of GMail, so I naturally started to use Google Tasks and Google Calendar as well. Integrating these on a desktop/laptop was easy, but getting them to work as one on a Smartphone never happened. The closest I got was an app that would do email (GMail), and another one that would manage tasks and calendar (CalenGoo). (The Desktop was never an issue with any platform.)

I've tried to migrate to Inbox (Google makes it pretty easy) three different times now, but kept going back to the old familiar applications.  I've also tried several stand-alone programs that handle tasks or calendar, but they didn't make life any easier.

But this time I think it's sticking. I was going to move back to the Calengoo/GMail system a couple of weeks ago, but it was now lacking some stuff I had started to rely on:

• Reminders - which are like tasks
• Snooze - the ability to snooze emails and reminders and have them delivered to you later
• Pin - makes sure important emails or reminders are always there, staring you in the face

I couldn't replace any of this with the old system (without adding a bunch of new, third party programs). I even tried Microsoft Outlook for Android - which does a very nice job of integrating Email, Contacts and Calendar - but it lacks accommodation for Reminders - which is now pretty huge to me.

Google says it's going to continue investing in this platform - and they say it's the future of email. It's not perfect (the Calendar needs integration), but it's getting there. For now, I'm stuck with the new platform, and that's OK.

If you're GMail centric give it a shot - but stick with it for a couple of weeks to see if it adheres.