Have you ever had a full-blown panic attack because you could not find the email you were looking for? Have you spent an hour in search of an email attachment because you are not sure if you have sent it or not? You are not alone. Disorganization of an email inbox is a common occurrence, but you can prevent it from wasting time – and your brainpower.
You’re a Star!
One of the easiest ways to indicate that an email is special is to put a star beside it. Yep, the same thing your grade three teacher did to make you feel special is a feature now offered by Gmail. Beside each email in your inbox is the outline of a star. Click it and it goes bright yellow, drawing your attention. In your ‘setting’ you can even choose between one, four or all 12 markers to differentiate importance. Your grade three teacher would be proud.
Labeling
This kind of labeling is socially acceptable. By labeling each email, you can give it a name and a color box to associate it with a group. You can differentiate between work and personal emails, various companies or girlfriend one and girlfriend two (three, four, seven…). On the ‘Settings’ page, click on ’Labels,’ and you will see a list of options. Near the bottom, you will find a button entitled ‘Create new label.’ Click it and follow the instructions on the screen.
Clean House…Eventually
We have all done it. We wait until our inbox is full of 3,607 messages before we think it is a good time to clean out our inbox. As tempting as it is to put it off, a few minutes of deleting unwanted emails will save a whole day’s worth of work six months from now.
Hoarders Paradise
If you are one of those people who just cannot get rid of anything, the archiving option in Gmail has you in mind. Archiving an email is like filing it away so it does not clog up your inbox. When you open a message, an option pops up along the top of your email to archive a message. You can also use the Reply and Archive option if you would like to archive messages after you have replied to them.
Email Signature
If you have to sign your name to every single email you write, your wrist can get sore. Save your time and wrists by using the email signature option. Whenever you create a new email, your unique signature will pop up at the bottom, saving you precious time and money on each email.
Don’t get buried underneath your email inbox, organize it!
