Nice work on the UI. But I think what he meant with "to-do list" is that he has no control of what people can put on his inbox, and that he has to waste time reading emails before he knows what that person wants. To solve something like this you'd have to have this problem in the first place, so talking to a lot of powerful people is what I'd do in the beginning (and that's why it's a hard problem to attack IMO).

I'm thinking of taking a stab at this idea too.