Email overload has a serious impact on productivity, the attention span and stress at work. In our previous article, we analyzed email overload ramifications and proposed a to contain it. 7 steps methodology Today, we’ll take a more practical approach and look into the tools you can use (with Gmail) to both reduce the number of emails you receive and accelerate their sorting. We’ll first look into Gmail’s built-in features and then propose some tools to extend them. GMAIL BUILT-IN FEATURES Before we look into the solutions to extend Gmail’s functionality, let’s see what we can do with the built-in features. Over the years, Google added several functions to help its user prioritize and sort their email flow. HIGH-LEVEL CATEGORIZATION WITH “INBOX” Inbox is a new product released to the public in 2015. Its goal is Inbox is now available in two different ways: you can use it as a replacement for Gmail, by going . to sort your emails into categories. on the Inbox website The standalone product has up to 8 bundles: Out of the box, the accuracy of the bundling is not exactly top-notch, but it can get better as you refine it. Trips, Saved, Purchases, Social, Updates, Forums, Promos, and Low Priority. Inbox brings many other exciting features, such as batch-archiving email, snoozing the important one to respond later or creating reminders without leaving the app. Sadly, : Inbox will no longer be available as a standalone product by the end of March 2019. Google is shutting it down If you would rather keep all the other features offered in Gmail, . Just go to the ⚙️ on the top right > Configure Inbox. There are up to 4 categories available with the Gmail version: . you can also activate Inbox on the regular Gmail website Social, Promotions, Updates, Forums THE FEATURE IMPORTANT In Gmail, there are several built-in prioritization systems among which the important flagging. It looks like a yellow flag next to your email. There are two ways to use it: By default (on the new Gmail Inbox), you can manually flag each mail as important or not. In Settings > General, activating the setting will have . You can still interact manually with the tagging, and it will improve the precision of the automated tagging. personal level indicator Google automatically tag the emails for you UNSUBSCRIBING MADE EASY Thanks to a little script, it’s possible to unsubscribe from newsletter without even leaving your mailbox and with just a couple clicks. Il will . unsubscribe you automatically from emails that to which you gave a specific label It just takes a couple minutes to set it up: on your Drive and open it. Copy the sheet Click the arrow at the top of the sheet and then configure. You’ll have to authorize the script and then pick a label. That’s all the script needs to work. Gmail Unsubscriber Now go to your mailbox and label any unwanted email as . Every 15 minutes, the script goes through your mailbox to unsubscribe you. unsubscribe The Google Sheets will populate itself with all the services it unsubscribed you to. You can thank Amit Argawal for the script. This hack is quick to set up, easy to use and can potentially save you much time. Use it to the bone! GOING FURTHER WITH LABELS Labels can prove to be super useful for more than just cleaning up the undesirable. You can create as many as you may need and nest them. Labels are particularly helpful because they are such as the filters, the search or the Priority Inbox (Settings > Inbox > Inbox Type). integrated with other Gmail features The Priority Inbox structure your inbox into up to 4 sections (the default is ). You can mix it with your custom labels. Important and Unread, Starred, Everything Else MASTERING GMAIL SEARCH OPERATORS Ever spent way too long looking for an old email? Thanks to the star or the important label crucial information should already be segregated from the rest of your mailbox. Sometimes it’s not enough: this is when the search modifiers come into play. The modifiers are incredibly potent because they can be : any information you remember about the mail can be useful to find it back. For instance, will search for emails with either lunch or dinner in their subject line, labeled important, containing a Google Drive document and sent/received before June the 10th of 2017. Search modifiers are plentiful and pretty straightforward. The is available on Google’s documentation. stacked with one another indefinitely label:important has:drive has:document before:2017/06/10 {subject:dinner subject:lunch} full list EXTENDING GMAIL MEETING SCHEDULING You’re scheduling many meetings for your work, and the back and forth is becoming a hassle? There are several ways to go around this issue. The first and most natural to implement is to adopt an Think about the intent — what you’re trying to achieve — when you’re replying to an email. If the goal is to set up a meeting, offering several meeting time option from the first email can help remove unnecessary steps. We covered in another article. It can be used for anything and not just emails. action-oriented writing style. action-oriented writing While this simplifies the email flow, you still have to check your calendar every time before suggesting potential meeting times… Unless you get some help. LET AN AI ASSISTANT HANDLE THE BACK AND FORTH If your working in sales or any other field requiring to book several meeting each day, you can consider getting helped to save more time. There are AI scheduling assistants that can help you deal with the meetings overload. The process is quite straightforward. These AI assistants, such as or connect to your Google Calendar. When you want to schedule a meeting with someone, you add the email address of the assistant in the cc field. The bot will then reach out to your recipient offering several meeting times. Once your recipient reaches back to Kono/Amy to confirm, the meeting is automatically added to your calendar. Kono Amy With Kono, there is even a that can quickly schedule meetings with your teammates in a single command such as: . The bot also handles rescheduling if needed. Slack bot @kono schedule meeting with @Bob and @Robert next week SNOOZE, SCHEDULE AND FREEZE EMAILS WITH BOOMERANG helps you to make sure your emails get a reply, and you don’t forget about any of them. It comes with several features allowing you to: Boomrang Schedule email to send later Remind you if you don’t hear back from someone after sending an email “Boomerang” emails which is a bit like snoozing: your email is archived and comes back in your inbox at the time you choose. Pause your inbox which stops new email from coming into your inbox until you’re ready for them. You can set up an auto-responder for the bounced emails and set up exceptions that bypass the pause. GWAP LIKE YOU MEAN IT All the previous tools we mentioned to make it more structured and provide additional features to handle the flow of incoming emails better. are built on the existing Gmail inbox At , we have a different approach to this issue. We know that each company is different and has its email processes, so we let our (“groups”) to sort the incoming storm. The benefits are apparent after the setup phase. Gwapit customers create and share custom filters Screenshot of Gwapit’s main dashboard with all the notifications coming from different apps goes above simply managing your emails notifications. It . We currently support Gmail, Slack, Github, JIRA, and Confluence. Gwapit connects to your workspace apps to regroup and prioritize your notifications flow Gwapit is currently in beta, . build it with us Originally published at gwapit.com on October 2, 2018.
