“ If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention,
it will take more of your attention than it deserves.” — david allen
This app is different—it’s not a simple to-do list manager. Inbox keeps you organized and on track by enforcing five key practices: Collecting, Processing, Organizing, Reviewing, and Doing. The point? To keep you calmer, clearer, and more productive. This app helps you not only with whatever you’re paid to do, but also across all the activities of your life.
The Workflow
As you do these practices with Inbox, you’ll begin to see that any activity involves all five. Evenly and consistently applying them is the key. Collect: Capture ideas on notes, stored in Boxes. Process: Decide what you’ll do about each. Organize: Make lists for your projects and activities. Review: Calendar your projects to track. Do: Take action as appropriate.
For each of Inbox's guided practices there is a resource to store the outcome.
Collect: Calm your mind
What have you got on your mind right now? Things you want to do? Should do? Could do? Might do? Most of us juggle our options over and over, using mental energy better used elsewhere. This first Inbox practice helps you to calm your mind by collecting everything you need to think about in one place where you can act on it later.
Spend some time every day collecting. This practice alone can significantly reduce stress, and is the foundation upon which all the other practices rest.
Process: Upfront decisions
Now that you have lots of ideas in Collect, it’s time to make decisions about what you’ll do or not do. Inbox steps you through your ideas one by one and stores the product of that thinking in your system. This habit turns “Wow, I have so much stuff to do!” into “I know exactly what I’ll do on everything in my life.” It is tremendously freeing.
For each item collected, Inbox asks: “Is this actionable?” There are only three answers: Yes, Later, No. And for each there are three ways you can process it and move on.
Organize: Make your lists
Organize is planning, your way. Step-by-step projects go here. So do grocery lists, your list of awesome band names, and that list of what you'd buy with lottery winnings. You can tag, schedule, prioritize, add locations, highlight, repeat items, reorder—whatever make sense to you. You can even outline in plain text, move lists around, and make sublists.
Every action and list have a wide range of metadata, including: contexts, locations, tags, people, prioity, difficult, perspective, start and due dates, recurrence, and more.
Review: Stay up to date
Reviewing keeps you confident and relaxed by making sure your Inbox system is always current. First, finish all of your Collecting and Processing. Second, scan through your lists; add, edit, and remove actions as necessary to keep them up to date. Further, lists and actions can be assigned to a Review calendar for regular, periodic checkups.
Every action that has a date is displayed by Inbox's Review guide. Quickly see what you have scheduled for today, this week, and beyond. And keep them up-to-date.
Do: Find perspective
The Do section's Views filter your actions based on their settings. The practice of using Views helps you select the best action to do from a manageable, slimmed-down list of everything in your life. Quickly know from all of your lists what's next, what can be done where you are, and with which conditions best suit you in the moment.
Views are instant planning, helping you choose wisely given your present circumstances. Quickly know everything you can accomplish best right now.
More Features
The Inbox interface is made up of three sections. First is the left-hand Source List, an outline-format view of all your data. The right-hand Detail View shows you the currently selected source, be it a box, folder, list, calendar, or view. And below are the five Inbox practices displayed as buttons, each revealing their activity popover.
Options
The Options button allows you to work with your data file. Back it up manually (it's automatically backed up every 8 hours), email yourself your data file, import from another data file, or reset your data. You can also check the status of your iCloud Data.
Share
Here you can move, duplicate, send, trash, or copy the text of an Inbox item. Share your to-do list with coworkers, email someone the text of a note, or reprioritize your lists. You can copy the text of the item to paste anywhere.
Add
The Add button makes any Inbox object. Items are inserted wherever you tap Add or at the bottom of their corresponding section. For example, adding a Box places it at the end of Collect’s Boxes list or inside another Box if you have already navigated to one.
Help
The Help button displays this Quick Start Guide for your reference. You'll also find the About infor- mation here and the email address for support questions (support@- midnightbeep.com). Ask us anything—we're always happy to help!
Reorder
Edit buttons do what you'd expect; they allow you to reorder items as well as add and delete with standard controls. And for Lists you can toggle "Hide Completed Actions?" so you can focus on just what you have left to do.
Sync
Inbox uses iCloud to update your data on your devices in real time. Make sure you are signed in to the same iCloud account on all devices. If Inbox hasn't run in a while on one device, please launch and wait a few seconds for Inbox to catch up.
Midnight Inbox – Coming Soon!
Midnight Inbox Touch
Midnight Inbox Classic
Midnight Inbox Mobile