Believe it or not, email is still a staple in professional and personal communication on a daily basis. If you’re leading a busy professional lifestyle, the chances are that your Gmail inbox is flooded with different messages. Thousands of emails may overwhelm you and cause you to miss on some important messages. It’s not going to work like that.
For Gmail users, there are many ways you can optimize your inbox to lead a more efficient everyday life. To help you achieve this, we’ve asked many industry experts about what they used to optimize Gmail. As a result, we’ve come up with 30 ways to change your emailing forever. Let’s take a look.
Optimize your Inbox
- Use keyboard shortcuts
Before you make any other changes, make sure you master the keyboard shortcuts for faster navigation. Go to your Inbox and go to Settings, followed by General and reach the Keyboard Shortcuts section.
- Pick a look at works for you
Depending on your lifestyle, you can choose the best way your inbox looks. Between default, important/unread/starred first and priority inbox, you have five ways to tweak to optimize your Gmail inbox.
- Set a display density
Some of us prefer a cozy Gmail inbox design, while others are either opting for compact or comfortable. Different people prefer different styles, but you can optimize Gmail by setting your favorite one as a default.
- Make sure you turn on personal level indicators
“Many people mistakenly reply to messages the wrong way,” explains Rebecca Gross, a marketing and business expert. “Turning on personal level indicators will allow you to see if an email is sent just to you or to a larger group.”
- Mute irrelevant group conversations
Old group emails threads can last much longer than they’re supposed to and this can be a problem. To solve it, all you have to do is mute the ones that are irrelevant. By doing so, you can save some valuable information remaining there.
- Receive all your emails at one place
Logging in and out of your many accounts can be a hassle. Thankfully, Gmail can be optimized by combining up to five different accounts, @gmail.com or otherwise. The option can be found in the “Accounts and Import” tab.
- Customize your left-side navigation
Just because Gmail has a default row of options on the left doesn’t mean you can’t change the order of them.
With the “Labels” option, you can select which ones you want to see and which ones you don’t. Having everything you need nearby is a big advantage.
- Archive Emails
Businesspeople around the world get headaches when they realize they’ve deleted an important email.
Anything that has to do with important information, personal or business, needs to be archived. By doing so, you free up valuable space in your inbox and don’t lose your data. There is also an option to store the data on Google Drive.
Sending files back and forth is easy, plus Google has you covered with programs that provide you with 100GB of extra storage for $1.99/month or 1TB for $9.99/month.
Utilize your labels
- Think about what works for you
Gmail can use labels to mark mail you receive the way you want it. The chances are that you receive hundreds of emails on a weekly basis. To combat missing something or getting lost, you have to organize your mail into several categories.
In the left part of the Inbox page, you can create new labels, add certain contacts to be preemptively labeled or delete labels. Doing so will help you lead a much more organized life. Colored stars, names and other perks will help your most important labels become noticeable.
- Hashtags are an option, too
An extra level of organizing your Gmail inbox can be found in the use of hashtags. Even though they are mostly utilized on social media, hashtags can help you organize your mail.
Include hashtags of your choice in the body of an email, and you’ll be able to group it with all other mail containing the same hashtag.
- Use advanced search along with filters
If your business life is busy, you need to have easy access to your past email conversations. At a certain point, you might need to revisit them. There are certain difficulties you might come across when searching for old bank reports, tax returns, etc.
Sometimes, simply typing in a name or an email address won’t work. For this reason, in particular, you have to master the use of advanced searches and filters.
Optimizing your Gmail Inbox this way is incredibly easy. You can pick any of the following categories to sort by:
- Labels
- Folders
- Senders
- Receivers
- Subject lines
- Words within the body
- Attachments
- The date range
There are also several options for scanning through read, unread, spam and other types of mail you might have.
- Use Gmail filters to set up automation
Searching for old mail may be a nuisance, but you can avoid that by setting preemptive Gmail filters for the future.
Optimize Gmail just by setting the criteria you deem worthy. Filtering can be done by size, attachment count or overall timing. Also, there is an option to filter by email and have all important emails from the same person arriving in the same manner.
- Automatic forwarding will save you time
If one of your accounts sends emails to only one address, you can add the “from:” filter to automatically forwards any document or mail to a certain person.
For instance, if you are receiving bank account data from your bank every two weeks, turn on automatic forwarding for your significant other to receive them right away.
- If you’re not sure if you’re going to need mail, archive it
Filtering can also aid you in salvaging mail that you’re not sure you’re going to need. Instead of deleting messages, you can filter by address for your Gmail inbox to archive all mail from a certain person.
Archiving can also be organized so that you can scroll through your semi-important mail whenever you want.
- Filter to delete, too
Many times, a person will encounter unwanted mail from people who are harassing or spamming them. To save yourself valuable time, you can optimize Gmail by automatically filtering mail from a certain address and deleting it right away.
If the situation is more serious, we advise you to archive it in case law enforcement needs to be consulted. Such mail can be used as valuable evidence in a case.
- Filter your news to be marked as important
For example, if Apple update emails are important to you, you can tweak the setting to have them marked as important automatically. If you’ve already set your inbox to display important mail on top, you’ll never miss news or emails that are important to you, both personally and professionally.
To conclude
Gmail is the most popular email client for a reason. With its plethora of possibilities and customization choices, you can tailor your inbox any way you want. Optimizing Gmail isn’t a time-consuming endeavor; all you need is a little bit of thinking, and you’ll find your life more organized and more efficient.
Author – Jack White
