The email<>todo part of this workflow actually works reasonably well. Most of today’s email clients are built around the concept of Inbox Zero, which effectively turns your email inbox into a todo list with public write access.

Somehow, today’s best-in-class email apps are hybrids, combinations of the best ideas every other email app brought before. It’s hard to imagine email without web apps, limitless storage, notifications, archive search, and a bit of over-the-top self-promotion. Each feature, at one time, was enough to launch a new email app, to convince us all to... See more