How to Organize Your Gmail Inbox in 15 Minutes: Seventeen Secrets (2023)

An average employee spends 1/3 of their office time on email. At $142,000 (average Bay Area tech salary), we pay our employees $47,000 a year to manage their inboxes!

That's not even the worst of it. Every time you pause your work to check your email, it takes about23 minutesto regain your focus.

The ugly truth is that if people like you, they will continue to approach you. And it is not very easy to ignore this unread pop-up.

They spend hours going through emails, deciding what to do with them, and finally processing them; You're basically spending a lot more time in your inbox than you originally planned.

If you can't escape but still want peace of mind, better organization is the best way out.

In this post, you will learn how to organize your Gmail inbox to make it more productive and efficientcooperationtool and no distraction.

Table of Contents

• 17 clever ways to organize your inbox
• Here are some tools to help you get started
• End

17 clever ways to organize your inbox

1. Place the most relevant emails at the top

Need all new emails at the top of your inbox? I'm sure you don't read them all right away.

A good way to organize your inbox is to put relevant emails at the top, e.g. B. Those marked as important or marked with an asterisk.

Gmail gives you five options for organizing your inbox.

• • Go to your settings (the gear icon at the top)
  • Click the drop-down menu next to the inbox type.

And that means each of them:

Lack- Displays emails in the order they arrived, the layout we see on a daily basis.

important first: Gmail uses its ownforecastto identify which emails are important and places them at the top of your inbox with a yellow flag. Everything else goes underneath.

don't read first– This setting shows unread emails above recent emails.This is especially useful when using the read/unread tasks list.

first stared: This is for those who use stars to prioritize their inbox. Starred messages appear first, followed by all others.

priority mailbox: Gmailto learnWhat type of email do you interact with the most?and places it at the top of your inbox. This is ideal for people who deal with a lot of email on a daily basis..

This is one of those Gmail organization tips that I can vouch for. It has worked wonders for me by keeping out emails I don't want to deal with right away.

2. Get rid of the tabs you don't use often

You don't have to have all five tabs in Gmail. You can turn off the ones you don't use often. The only tab that you cannot disable is the Main tab.

What you need to do:

• • Click Settings.
  • From the drop-down menu, click Configure Inbox
  • Select the tabs you want to enable or disable.

Pay close attention here: if you deactivate a tab, your messages will appear in the main account. Permanently delete those who don't get many emails. One for the Gmail organization!

3. Use tags to organize Gmail properly

Gmail is a label-based system. Inbox, Trash, and Drafts are technically names.

hang tagsThey're a great way to organize Gmail. You are likehang tagsYou can add emails that you send or receive. The good thing is that you can add more than one tag to an email. Another feature you would love is the ability to add colors to the labels.

you can have tooGmail applies labelsto emails as soon as they arrive, saving you manual effort. For example, you can mark all emails from your lawyers as documents. All you have to do is create a filter.

4. Automate emails attributable to your team (no forwarding)

If you're getting a large volume of emails, someone else on your team needs to work on them.

The usual practice when you want to organize Gmail is to check emails and forward them to teammates, an absolute waste of time.

Suppose you have a teammate who handles all of your sending partner's emails. You can with HiverautomaticallyAssign them all incoming emails from their email address.

You can also specify multiple conditions, e.g. For example, the sender's email address and a specific word in the subject line. The possibilities are basically endless.try it

5. Stop writing emails for internal conversations

The only way we all flood our inboxes and the inboxes of our teammates is by emailing for things that could very well be done differently.

If a topic has many aspects that need to be explained or discussed, bring it up face-to-face. If you cancel an appointment, meeting, or interview at the last minute, let them know in person or use the phone.

When nothing else seems feasible enough, there is one resort that works like a charm every time:email notes.

Notes are messages you can write to your teammates, and they appear alongside the email thread you're discussing (unlike in Slack or Hangouts where you have to let people know what email you're talking about and what's happening is and what is not). ).

Unlike chat, you can always go back and see what you were talking about in a thread. Never lose context.

You can use Notes to share customer information, offer advice, or anything that doesn't involve writing a full story. Every step to clean up your inbox is worth it.

6. Archive unnecessary e-mails in theFencefuture

Often we don't delete emails just because we might need them later. And then they pile up like there's no tomorrow.

For example, they send you a receipt every time you buy something from a vendor. You don't need them now, but they may come in handy when you're doing your bookkeeping at the end of the year. This is where the archive function comes into play.

Archiving does not delete your emails, it removes them from your inbox. They can also be searched.Your Gmail inbox is more organized. Everyone wins!

Select an email and look for the file-like icon at the top. Click on that and you're done.

You can also automate archiving by using filters; I'll explain it in the next point.

7. Use filters to automate everyday actions

Gmail has powerful filtering capabilities. You can filter emails by subject, sender, recipient, content and more. After you've filtered messages, you can tell Gmail what to do with them: you can flag them, set priorities, and decide whether emails get to your inbox.

What you will love is the automatic filtering. You can set criteria and actions: any email that meets the requirements will be automatically handled by Gmail.

All you have to do is start an advanced search. Click the gray arrow on the far right of your search bar.

And a drop down menu will open.

Enter an email address and click "Create a filter with this search" at the bottom right of the pop-up window.

For example, if you receive a lot of newsletter emails that you are not interested in, you can create a filter that automatically archives all emails from that address.

Ways to use filters to organize Gmail:

• • Flag all emails from an important person (e.g. your bank).
  • Automatically forward emails from a specific address
  • Archive emails that contain a specific word (e.g. Free Trial)

8. Experiment with Gmail Advanced (You'd Love Multiple Inboxes)

If you're new to Gmail Advance (formerly Labs), the first thing you should know is that it's a sandbox for Google. The ones that are successful will become standard features of Gmail and others may be deferred, but they're definitely worth trying.

The only feature that has been part of Gmail Advanced for years is multiple inboxes. You can create multiple dashboards, each designed to show a specific category of emails based on email type, subject, or personal preference.

You can display emails from a specific sender or emails with a specific label in a separate mailbox.

For example, you can add tags like "Reply Must", "To Do", "Backlog" and "Read Weekly" - all emails with a certain title will appear in the respective inbox:

hereis a helpful video if you want to organize Gmail with multiple inboxes.

9. Set up desktop notifications for new emails

If you're in a customer support role, we're pretty sure you get a lot of emails every day. If you prefer real-time participation, we strongly recommend setting up desktop notifications. This way, every time you get a new email, messages will appear at the top right of your screen.

To enable desktop notifications, you need to do the following:

• • Go to your settings (the gear icon at the top)
  • In the General Settings menu, scroll down to Desktop Notifications and click the radio buttons to enable them.

Pro Tip:Sometimes desktop notifications can become annoying and distracting. To avoid falling into this trap, turn on desktop notifications for emails marked as Important.

10. Activate the shocks

With so many spam emails, it's often easy to miss an important email in Gmail. Nudge is an algorithm in Gmail that returns emails to the top of your inbox if you or a recipient hasn't sent a reply. It's great if you need constant reminders to send replies orconsequencesto important emails.

There are two types of nudges in Gmail:

• • Suggest emails for reply:Emails you may have forgotten to reply to will appear at the top of your inbox.
  • Suggest follow-up emails:Sent emails that you may need to track appear at the top of your inbox

You can enable/disable nudges in the "General" tab of your settings.

11. Flag important messages

Gmail always tries to do its best to identify which emails (both individual messages and threads) are more important to you than others. It usually highlights them with "importance marks" (a yellow arrow next to the star).

Until recently, Gmail had in-app indicators that clarified why an email was marked as important, as opposed to "important according to our magic sauce," they now say.

While Gmail still manages to correctly label the most important emails for the most part, there are times when getting things wrong still works.

For the algorithm to work best for you, mark important messages yourself; In this way, the algorithm will quickly gain acceptance. One way to do this is to add/remove importance markers manually. Another option is to flag the messages.

In Gmail, stars are used for individual messages in a single thread, while importance markings are used for entire email threads. Stars and importance marks also help you organize Gmail searches faster, so it's definitely worth taking the time to add them.

12. Mute conversations

Tired of getting caught up in email conversations between coworkers/clients that you're not necessarily involved in? Then Gmail's Mute Conversations feature is for you.

When you mute a conversation in Gmail, related messages will no longer appear in your inbox. Any emails added to the conversation after you mute them will still be saved to your Gmail account, but will be automatically archived. You can still browse the discussion and view new messages.

To mute a conversation in Gmail, open the conversation, then click the More dropdown menu. Select "Mute" from the list and the dialog will be archived.

Any new messages sent to the conversation thread will not appear in your inbox but will be added to the archive.

To find muted conversations faster, type "is: muted" in the Gmail search bar.

You can unmute a conversation at any time. To unmute, simply locate the muted conversation and remove the "muted" tag from the email thread.

13. Use Gmail's smart reply and smart composition options

Gmail's Smart Reply feature displays short sentence reply suggestions based on the content of the email you've received.

You can enable Smart Reply for Gmail on the General Settings tab.

This feature allows you to click on the suggested short phrases you want to use as an answer and send them as is, or edit the answer before hitting send.

This is especially useful when you need to send quick replies to your emails.

Smart Compose builds on the idea of ​​Smart Reply, but helps you compose full replies to your emails instead of just short sentences.

You can enable Smart Compose on the General Settings tab in Gmail.

Pro Tip:Use the Smart Compose customization option to enable the Smart Compose option so it adapts to your writing style and improves composing suggestions.

You can enable Smart Compose personalization on the General Settings tab in Gmail.

14. Respond faster to emails with canned responses

If you find yourself typing the same email repliessome customersor colleagues, you should consider setting up canned responses (templates).

Saved replies are email templates that you can use to reply to emails with predefined text.

Blogger Ryan Robinson regularly gets questions from his readers. Use this feature to quickly share helpful tips, direct them to free resources on your site, and send links to guides (like your tutorial onhow do i start a blog) to continue learning.

You can enable templates on the Advanced tab in Gmail Settings.

15. Check Undo Send

This has to be one of the most practical.Gmail Features. If you've ever sent an email to an unintended recipient, or made a typo in an email, you're no stranger to the unfortunate embarrassment caused by your mistake.

Luckily, Gmail has an "undo send" option that lets you undo emails up to 30 seconds after they've been sent.

You can enable this option on the General Settings tab in Gmail Settings.

After enabling this, you don't have to worry about wrong recipient or typo. Instead, you now have between five and 30 seconds to "unsend" your email and take action to correct your mistakes.

16. Enable hover actions

With the new look of Gmail, introduced in April 2018, Gmail introduced hover actions. Hover your cursor over any email in your inbox and you'll see a collection of buttons.

Also known as "hover actions," these buttons let you quickly respond to an email with a single click. You can archive, delete, mark as unread or even defer emails. It's a small feature that makes interacting with email much faster.

Hover actions can be enabled on the General tab in Gmail settings.

17. Put emails on hold for later

Speaking of scrolling actions in Gmail, you can now defer emails. This option removes emails from your inbox just to check them later, which is perfect for anything that you need to act on at some point but can't act on now.

The functionality is simple: click the snooze scroll feature and choose when you want to see the email again. When the time is up, the message will be in your inbox.

Here are some tools to help you organize your Gmail account. Note that having one is generally a good ideaProject management tool for small businessesIt integrates with your Gmail.

Winter: Emails from delegates andKarlas tasks automatically. Write notes (not emails) for internal conversations. Use email templates.

sanébox:Prioritize and summarize messages by analyzing their headers. Archive unimportant emails under a “SaneLater” tag so you can deal with them later.

Letter box: Helps you stay away from spam.

Unroll.Me- Helps you manage all your newsletters from one dashboard. It makes unsubscribing surprisingly easy.

FarSearch:it is You can decide which emails deserve a notification. You can choose to receive information via SMS, phone call, desktop notification or via the AwayFind app.

End

Distractions at work last longer than you think.They derail your mental progress and it takes a while for your brain to refocus. Email is a major distraction at work, so doing something about it is only natural.

You'll be amazed at how much time you can save by getting your Gmail organized.

Don't let the inbox take over.