My apologies if this tip has already been...er...noted. I did do a search among the tips using a few key words first to try to ensure that this tip is unique.

I use the RTM gadget for Gmail. I often found myself wondering whether or not I'd typed a note for a particular task. There's no programmed-in way to tell in the Gmail gadget whether a note exists or not for a task, and I didn't want to keep clicking the "more details" link to launch a full RTM window each time I wondered whether a note exists.

So...now, when I create a task for which there's no note, I type "EOM" (for "End of Message") at the end of the task. Doing this was inspired by the "EOF" I recall having to type in some programming language to check for an end of file. When I see "EOM" at the end of a task, I know that there's no need to open a full RTM window: I'm seeing all there is to see about the task.