Published Jan 7, 2026, 10:01 AM EST
After joining MUO in 2014 and earning a degree in Computer Information Systems, Ben left his IT job to go full-time with the site in 2016. He joined the editorial team in 2017 and has climbed the ranks since then.
As a writer, his specialties include Windows, Android, Gaming, and iPhone explainers and how-tos. He's been mastering Windows since 2009, got his first Android phone in 2011, and has used an iPhone daily since 2020. His work has been viewed over 100 million times.
Now, as a Senior Editor at MUO, Ben leads the Devices and Home segments, leading by example by writing dozens of high-quality articles each month.
Outside of work, Ben loves experiencing new video games, exploring music, learning new information, and enjoying time with friends. While MUO is his home, he also wrote briefly for Nintendo Life and has contributed to various company blogs.
For how much I write about tech, sometimes it’s shocking how low-tech my own methods can be. I’ve used such a practice to sort my email and keep track of what I need to action in it for a long time; I’m finally going to adjust this to a much smoother solution.
While this isn’t wildly groundbreaking, it will solve some pain points and help me better keep my tasks in check.
My current system of marking emails unread
Functional, but clunky
For as long as I can remember having a Gmail account, I’ve used the Unread first sorting method. With how my mind works, I need to have pending tasks in front of me, or I’ll forget to act on it. Thus, having unread emails appear at the top means I won’t overlook them just because more messages came in and pushed them down.
On a small scale, this works. I can quickly blast through all the messages that I want to see but don’t need to take any action on, then mark the ones that need more time as unread. However, several problems arise when you start to do this regularly.
The biggest issue is that my email inbox becomes a jumble of purposes. Something I simply haven’t looked at yet is mixed in with a task I intended to complete two weeks ago, meaning what an unread email represents isn’t clear at a glance.
Functionally, the biggest problem is that toggling an email between unread and read is flaky. Mailbird on desktop is the primary way I interact with email, and it lets you choose how long it takes to mark a message as read. I have this set to one second, so I don’t mistakenly scroll past an email. This helps, but also means I have to linger on unimportant messages longer than I otherwise might.
Unfortunately, Mailbird isn’t consistent with marking messages as unread. On many occasions, I’ll mark an email as unread, only for it to revert to read after several seconds. With my setup, this means the email has vanished into the ether unless I notice it before my inbox refreshes. I’ll completely forget about it unless it happens to come to mind.
The first step: a dedicated folder
Give it all a specific space
I’ve never been someone who gets particular about email organization. Aside from using Unroll.me for subscriptions and occasionally making folders for a short-term purpose, my email interactions are primarily dealing with unread mail or searching past messages.
Thus, I wanted to keep my unread mail replacement similar. I created a new folder called _To-Do in each of my inboxes. Now, when I have a message I don’t want to lose, I move it to this folder. Then, I don’t have to worry about losing it in the sea of other messages.
Because I need something in my face (like an unread message count) to remind me to take action, I still mark the messages in this folder as unread. But now, if they accidentally get marked as read, they’re easy to retrieve. When I’m done with one, I delete it or move it back to the inbox so it’s out of my mind.
I’ve used the handy Gmail feature of marking a message as Starred for a long time, doing so for messages I expect to need in the future. This is similarly useful, but I end up forgetting about most starred messages and only cleaning them up when I wander into the folder.
The supplement: a better to-do list
Not all reminders live in email
Moving emails into a dedicated folder solves the issue of losing mail to the void. Many of the emails I kept marked as unread for too long are directly actionable, such as opening an account and checking an alert. The above system works for those.
But that’s not the entire problem; an email client isn’t a good way to keep track of broader tasks you need to do. I would also mark emails unread that represent something else I needed to do—like a bank deposit alert email reminding me it's time to budget for the month.
The solution for those was to finally start using a proper to-do list app again. I’ve tried these several times, and like most productivity solutions I’ve used, they’ve never felt natural. My most recent attempt was getting all my recurring tasks into Todoist—which I then proceeded to never open.
TickTick is great
This time, I’ve gone back to TickTick, which is the only to-do app that ever clicked for me (I don’t recall why I ever stopped using it). For the past several years, I’ve stuck with Apple Reminders, only because of its easy Siri integration. It’s so much easier to say “Remind me to mail the package on Thursday” than to make all the taps required to set that in the app—when Siri works, that is.
However, I didn’t realize that TickTick offers two options for this: creating tasks by voice directly, or regularly syncing (and then deleting) tasks from Apple Reminders. This lets me keep the benefit of voice creation while using a much better (and cross-platform) app. TickTick has tons of great features, which have been great to rediscover.
One that I greatly appreciate is that you can set recurring tasks to create their next iteration upon completion, instead of based on the due date. This is an issue in Apple Reminders, where the next recurrence is set based on when you planned to do it, not when you did.
For example, say I set a reminder to replace my water filter every 90 days, but this time it doesn’t need a change until 100 days. Completing the task on day 100 will create the next reminder for 90 days in the future, instead of 80 days later.
Simple changes can have a big impact
This all sounds basic, but it speaks to how easy it is to stick with what we’re used to, even when it’s not optimal. It takes time to break the muscle memory of marking email as unread, but it only took a few minutes to finally correct the root of the issue.
Now, I have a dedicated place to follow up on emails, whether that’s addressing them directly or using them to create a reminder for something else. I don’t have to let unread emails linger in my inbox for days, weeks, or even months.