Gmail is magical. Those of you who’re too young to remember how life was before gmail really do not realize the revolution gmail was.
Sadly, most people do not use gmail to its full potential, or worse they keep trying to use it like the old systems with folders and such.
Tip: If your inbox has messages that have been sitting there for > 24 hours then you’re doing it wrong!
Let me show you how to use gmail properly.
Decide what to do with an e-mail exactly when you see it
If you can repsond in less than 2 minutes then do it. Otherwise you’ll end up with 10,000 e-mails in your inbox.
But if it takes long to respond
Then add it as a task with a reminder.
Archive or delete
There’s zero value in keeping LinkedIn notifications and random messages you’ll never need again. Decide if you want to delete or archive.
If it’s something you’ll never need to search, just delete it.
But if you might need it, then …
Add a label
Label is gmail’s superpower. No longer do you have to put a message in a single folder. Add as many labels as you like, it only makes searching easier.
Archive it
Archiving doesn’t delete the message, it simply removes the inbox label. You can still search for it, you can still look for it by labels, but now your inbox is clean.
Finally, don’t go to bed without tackling every message in your inbox
But wait, Zee, don’t I need to organize my e-mails if I need them in the future?
Hell no. You just need to learn how to search:
But I have too many e-mails!
I got into gmail during its beta days. I’ve been using it since forever. I have nearly 10GB of e-mails, and yet a clean zero inbox.
Once you’ve done all this, I’ll do a post on valuable gmail addons that are lifesaving. You can find them youself in the ‘Get add-ons’’ section.
Enjoy!
