Inbox Zero

This is a review of “Find Extra Hours in Your Week: Calendar and Gmail Tricks to Save You Time” by Jennie Magiera.  

Due to the nature of the conference, Jennie’s information was all directed at users of Google Calendars and Gmail.  My remarks today will be confined to her suggestions related to Gmail.  Next year, as you know, ACPS teachers will be migrating to Gmail.  

Jennie urged us to keep the number of emails in our inboxes to zero.  All of the tips below are not only suggested as a way of saving time, but as a way of keeping a tidy inbox.

For example, Jennie suggested the use of keyboard shortcuts.  I did not know, for example, that by entering the letter “c” the box pops up where you can compose a new Email. Although I did go to “settings” and turn them on, I have not started using any of these shortcuts yet, I was just reminded of them when I begin reviewing the material for this post. There are around seventy of these shortcuts, so I’m sure I’ll never learn them all. I've just installed a chrome app known as KeyRocket which is designed to teach keyboard shortcuts. When you do a particular action, a small box pops up and tells you what shortcut you might have used. Having done that, perhaps I’ll start learning some of these shortcuts. I don’t believe I’ll ever achieve the 200-300 finger actions per minute required to become an expert gamer, however, over time, keyboard shortcuts may indeed save me some time.

Here are some other Gmail tips Jennie offered:

• Have mail from all of your email addresses forwarded to your personal Gmail account (you can still send outgoing emails using the return address and signature line from your other accounts)
• Use filters to search through your emails--even archived mail
• Use “labels” (tags) for sorting purposes--you can give an email multiple labels and get it out of your inbox at the same time
• Use filters to send automatic, canned responses to selected emails
• Use templates to speed in responding to emails
• Color code emails
• “Unsend” an email (if you act quickly enough)
• Use the Boomerang App to have unopened emails sent back to you
• Use Boomerang to have selected emails returned to you after a set time period
• Schedule the sending of outgoing mail
• Use a “vacation responder” to send canned responses while you are getting away from it all
• Transfer emails to a “todo” list which integrates with Google Calendars

I don’t know about you, but I appreciate all of these time-saving tips as well as the encouragement to keep the size of my inbox down--things which don’t come naturally to me.  I hope I have wetted your appetite for one of the first changes you will notice next year--Gmail