GOOGLE changed my life in an unexpected way a couple of weeks ago.

I was invited to replace my tried and true Gmail email system with something called “Inbox”.

I was extremely hesitant as I’ve been bumping along happily with Gmail for the best part of a decade with no real complaints.

Very few people like to change the way they interface with information technology. We’re generally relieved to have figured out how to make something work and will happily just keep doing that until it stops working.

But what Google has done with Inbox is in equal parts terrifying and very, very clever.

They’ve obviously looked very hard at how people actually use email and then taken a look at what they could do to help that.

Since using it, I’ve realised that most emails received fall into three categories: messages I just don’t care about; messages I might want to read, but require no action and messages I need to do something about.

There’s a “low priority” box in which Google pretty accurately lumps together things I don’t need to worry about.

This leaves me five or six messages I need to do something about.

When I’ve responded to a message or actioned it I hit “done” and it’s archived.

I can review the low-priority messages and consign them all to the archive with the touch of one button.

If there’s something I need to action later, I can pin it to my inbox.

In some messages we only want the attachments and now I can get to those without even opening the message concerned.

And then there’s the bit where it gets creepy.

Integrating with the app on my phone, Inbox knows where I am.

If I get a message while out of the office I can tell Inbox to show it to me again when I’m at my desk.

Google’s all-seeing eye returns it to my task list when I’m back in the office.

Similarly, if I get a personal message I don’t want to be dealing with at work I can ask it to shelve the message until I get home.

Google reads my mail and handily pigeonholes items such as bills and receipts into “Finance”.

Also when a message is something I want to deal with tomorrow, or next week, I can schedule it to disappear until the appointed hour.

This is a huge improvement over my old method of leaving messages read, but not archived, in the hope I’d go back to them at a suitable time.

When all my messages are pigeonholed or done, the screen turns to a sunny blue sky that makes me feel surprisingly good about life.

There are a whole bunch of tweaks over the old way of doing things and most of them are beneficial.

My one gripe is that the handling of large numbers of attachments, for example 20 photographs, is more fiddly than the old Gmail.

The nice thing is that Gmail is still there, fully usable, with all my messages, so I can go back any time.

Any Gmail users who get the upgrade invitation are strongly advised to take advantage of it.

For the busy information worker it’s a godsend.

Just spare a thought for the poor buggers stuck using Outlook.