Smart lists are only a saved search. Tasks have to recide in a regular list also. Maybe you can move it to another regular list? I keep almost all my tasks in the Inbox and access them through a number of smart lists.

I have a smart list that's pretty dumb! It has no filter and it's called "All Tasks". I like having such a list so if I "lose" a task and can't figure out where it is, I can always find it here. And it keeps my Inbox uncluttered and a place for emailed in tasks only.

Hope this helps in your world.

To clear out my inbox, I keep all of my tasks in a list named | (yes just | to be as narrow as possible). Then as things get tagged and handled in the inbox, I move them over to | to get an empty inbox.

On the other hand (not to argue with rajjan, just to point out some different ways of leveraging RTM), I keep tasks out of my Inbox (unless I create them quickly and haven't processed them yet). So whatever works for you, go for it. :)

Like rajjan, I do almost all of my day-to-day task operations/management via Smart Lists; I only use Lists to define physical contexts ("Home", "Errands", "Internet", "Phone") or to share with contacts ("Shared", "Wedding").

Hope this helps!