I got an invitation to use Google’s new email app, Inbox, yesterday. I installed it on my phone and that allows you to use it with a web browser as well. My first impressions are all positive. 
One thing I noticed pretty quickly is how much easier it is to deal with older mail. You can label mails as lower priority, snooze them (they go away from your mailbox for a bit), make them add themselves to “bundles” and other nice features. This article from Lifehacker does a decent job explaining it.
Naturally, I had a broader business thought as I was using it. The activities – reading and responding to email – were things most of us do every day (all day in some of our cases!). But because I was approaching the activities in a new way and was looking at the information in a new way, I was suddenly getting more done. My inbox is cleaned up and there is a system in place to ping me with reminders. The information I use daily is better organized and much more findable. That, to me, seems to be an approach we can all try out in many of our other business activities. Look at the same old things in a different way with a different approach and maybe, just maybe, we become more productive.
What do you think?
Consult Keith 