I've never been a fan of using an email application to manage tasks. That's because I've tried and know that it doesn't work-at least not in a standalone manner. So I don't use email as my task manager.
Instead, I have used apps that are meant solely for task and project management. They manage to integrate into email in a variety of different ways, but they keep email at bay so that I can work on the bigger picture stuff and deal with communication later.
But that can be a problem.
For those who use their email app to manage what they have to do, they tend to react and deal with their emails almost instantly- meaning they handle them as they come in and have less of a backlog. They also organize their emails in folders far more often than those who don't use email to manage their tasks.
Basically, they consider emails to be... tasks.
The idea of using your email app as a task management app is counter-productive. You spend an inordinate amount of time with your email app open, allowing it to steal focus from you every time an email hits the inbox. But spending time in your task management app is the ideal. You keep on top of the tasks that are crucial to enhancing your productivity. An email app keeps you connected to others but disconnected from your tasks, whereas a task management app disconnects you from others, but-more importantly-connects you to your tasks.
And self-connection is key to progressive personal productivity.
It may seem counterproductive to bring an entirely new app for task management when you feel you can do it within the email app itself. In fact, many organizations compel you to manage tasks with the email app by having you set up folders and other things that work for them. But that really won't work for you (or for them, either).
As with anything, good "front-end" work is what is needed here. You will need to adopt new habits in order to get out of your email inbox and into your task inbox. Give it time-and look at the options I've mentioned in the section on task management.There's some real gold in there, and many of the options produce far less friction than you'd think.
You're ready for this. I know it.