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How to Set Up a GTD System with Automated Capture from Gmail and Slack

Most GTD guides spend a lot of time on the philosophy and not enough time on the plumbing. You can understand the capture-clarify-organize-reflect-engage model perfectly well and still end up with a broken system because your Gmail starred emails, your Slack saved messages, and your task manager are three separate things that never talk to each other.

This guide walks through setting up a GTD capture and processing system that actually connects those sources, so items flow into a single queue automatically and you can process them with the GTD clarify steps without switching between apps.

Step 1: Decide Which Sources Are Your Real Capture Buckets

Before connecting anything, get clear on where commitments actually enter your life. Most knowledge workers have more capture points than they realize.

Email is the obvious one. But not every email is a capture item. The goal is to flag emails that contain a commitment: something you agreed to, something you need to follow up on, something that requires a next action. Gmail's star or a specific label ("Process this") works well as the trigger.

Slack is the second major source for most teams. Slack's saved messages feature is designed exactly for this: you save a message because something needs to happen as a result of it. The save is the capture act.

Calendar events sometimes contain action items buried in the description field. These are easy to miss because calendar apps don't have an inbox, but if you're adding "[action]: send agenda before meeting" to event descriptions, those need to go somewhere.

Manual capture matters too. Thoughts, commitments from conversations, random ideas that arrive away from your keyboard all need a way into the system. A quick-capture text input handles this.

For most people, Gmail plus Slack plus manual input covers 90% of their open loops. Start there.

Step 2: Connect Your Sources to a Single Queue

The goal of this step is to get every flagged item from every source into one place, without copying anything manually.

Inboxero handles this through direct OAuth connections to each source. Here's how to set it up:

Connecting Gmail: Go to the Source Connections page in Inboxero settings. Click "Connect Gmail" and complete the OAuth flow. You'll be asked to choose your capture trigger: starred emails or a specific Gmail label. "Starred" works well if you don't already use stars for other purposes. If you do, create a label like "GTD-Inbox" and use that instead.

Once connected, any email you star (or label) in Gmail will appear in your Inboxero queue within five minutes. You don't need to do anything else in Gmail after flagging the email.

Connecting Slack: Click "Connect Slack" in Source Connections and complete the OAuth flow for your workspace. Inboxero captures saved messages by default. After connecting, any message you save in Slack (the bookmark icon on each message) will appear in your queue within five minutes.

If you use multiple Slack workspaces, you can connect each one separately on the Pro tier.

Connecting Google Calendar: For Calendar, Inboxero captures events where you've added "[action]" tags in the event description. This is useful if you regularly block time for things and embed the actual task in the event. Connect via OAuth in Source Connections the same way as the other sources.

Setting up manual capture: The queue page in Inboxero has a quick-capture input at the top. Type anything and hit Enter. The item goes into the queue immediately. This is your catch-all for anything that doesn't arrive through a connected source.

At this point, your capture system is running. Items from all connected sources accumulate in the queue automatically. The next step is processing them.

Step 3: Process Your Queue with the GTD Clarify Flow

Capture without processing is just a fancier pile. The processing step is where GTD actually does its work.

In Inboxero, click any item in the queue to open the processing view. You'll see the full content of the item (the complete email body, the full Slack message, your manual note) along with its source and timestamp.

The processing view presents the GTD clarify decision tree as a set of one-click classifications:

  • Next Action: This item requires one physical action. Assign it a context (@computer, @phone, @errands, or a custom tag you create) and optionally a project.
  • Project: This item requires more than one step. Create a new project inline or assign it to an existing one.
  • Waiting For: You've delegated this or you're waiting on someone else. The item moves to your Waiting For list with a timestamp.
  • Someday/Maybe: Not actionable now, but worth keeping. Goes to your Someday/Maybe list for review later.
  • Reference: Not actionable, but you want to keep it. Stored in Reference.
  • Trash: Done or irrelevant. Gone.

Keyboard shortcuts make this fast once you're comfortable: 1 through 6 map to the six classifications, Enter confirms, Z undoes the last action within five seconds.

After you classify an item, the next unprocessed item loads automatically. The goal is to process to zero: every item in the queue gets a destination. Inboxero shows a running count of unprocessed items in the header so you can see your progress.

Aim to process your queue once a day, ideally at a consistent time (morning or end of day both work). With automated capture from connected sources, the queue represents everything you flagged since your last session, which makes the processing step feel complete rather than like a partial sweep.

Step 4: Work from Your Next Actions and Projects Board

After processing, your classified items live in the Projects and Next Actions board. This is where you work from day to day.

The Next Actions tab groups items by context tag. If you're at your computer, you filter by @computer and see everything you can act on right now. If you're running errands, @errands shows you what to do while you're out.

The Projects tab shows each project with its associated next actions. Projects with no next action defined are flagged with a warning indicator. A project with no next action is a stuck project, and stuck projects are where commitments go to be forgotten. The board surfaces these automatically so you can fix them before they become problems.

The Waiting For tab shows delegated items with timestamps. Items older than two weeks are surfaced in the weekly review so you can follow up.

Step 5: Run a Weekly Review Using Your Actual Data

The weekly review is what keeps a GTD system trustworthy over time. Without it, projects stall, Waiting For items get forgotten, and your Someday/Maybe list turns into a graveyard.

Inboxero generates the review from live data rather than a static template. When you open the Weekly Review, it shows you:

  • How many unprocessed items are in the queue right now
  • Which projects have no next action
  • Which Waiting For items are more than a week old
  • How long it's been since you reviewed your Someday/Maybe list
  • What you completed since your last review

Each item in the review links directly to the relevant view. If a project has no next action, clicking it opens the project so you can add one. If a Waiting For item is stale, you can follow up or convert it to a next action directly from the review.

Completeing all steps logs the review with a timestamp. The Pro tier tracks your review streak and shows review stats over time, which adds a light accountability mechanism.

Schedule your review for a recurring time each week, either through the in-app reminder settings (Pro) or just as a recurring calendar event. The review works best when it's a fixed appointment rather than something you get to when you have time.

What This Setup Looks Like in Practice

Here's the daily and weekly rhythm once everything is connected:

During the day, you flag things as you encounter them: star an email, save a Slack message, quick-capture a thought. You don't do anything else with those items. They're captured.

Once a day, you open Inboxero and process the queue to zero. Each item takes five to thirty seconds to classify. A queue of twenty items takes ten minutes at most.

During the day, you work from the Next Actions board, filtered by your current context. You're not checking Gmail to find your tasks. You're not searching through Slack to remember what you saved. Everything is in one place, already processed.

Once a week, you run the weekly review. Inboxero tells you exactly what needs attention. You go through the checklist, fix stuck projects, follow up on stale items, and review your Someday/Maybe list. You end the review knowing your system is complete and current.

That's the whole system. The setup takes about thirty minutes. The free tier at Inboxero covers two source connections, which is enough to test whether automated capture changes how the system feels before deciding whether to upgrade.

FAQ

How long does it take to set up GTD with Inboxero? Connecting sources takes about five minutes per source. The OAuth flows are straightforward. The first processing session takes longer because you're likely clearing a backlog, but ongoing daily processing takes ten to fifteen minutes once the queue is running.

What if I already use OmniFocus or Things 3? Inboxero can replace your current GTD app for most use cases. If you have complex OmniFocus perspectives or scripting setups, there may be specific features you'd miss. But for the core GTD workflow (capture, process, organize, review), Inboxero covers everything.

Can I use Inboxero without connecting any sources? Yes. Manual quick-capture works without any connected sources. You can build a basic GTD system using only the queue and processing flow, then connect Gmail and Slack later.

What's the difference between the free and Pro tiers? The free tier supports two source connections, up to 50 unprocessed queue items, and 5 active projects. Pro removes all those limits, adds priority sync (items appear within two minutes instead of five), full review history with streak tracking, and bulk processing actions in the queue. See the full comparison on the Inboxero pricing page.

How do I handle items that come from sources Inboxero doesn't connect to yet? Use manual quick-capture for anything from a source that isn't connected. Type the item, hit Enter, and it goes into the queue with everything else. The processing workflow is the same regardless of how an item entered the queue.