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5 best hacks to keep your gmail inbox efficient and easy to manage

Gmail is among the largest email services in the world. Launched in April 2004, Gmail reached an impressive 1.5 billion monthly active users in 2018. But as with most professionals, email can be a big time sink and can cause major headaches during the workday. Here are some stats to show the state of email usage in the workplace such as:

• The average person spends 28% of their week reading or responding to email.
• Only 38% of the average inbox is considered important and relevant. 
• An email interruption requires 64 seconds on average for a person to recover from and return the work. 
• Limiting email access can greatly reduce levels of stress.

An email can hinder productivity and even hurt your health. There are many ways to organize Gmail that you can use in different combinations to improve your organizational efficiency:

1. Create new labels

Here, we start getting into tips about how to organize your emails, specifically. If you are used to using Outlook and any Microsoft product, probably used for the system of folders and sub-folders. But in Gmail, things work a little differently. Gmail relies on a system called “labels,” which allow you to associate emails with different subjects, categories, clients, or projects. The sky’s the limit here, so start creating new labels you can apply to your emails. In the Settings menu, head to the Labels tab and scroll to the bottom. There, you can create a New Label.

Title it whatever you want, but try to keep it concise and informative, so you can know at a glance what it’s meant to be used for.

Once you’ve created it, you can view it on the left-hand sidebar. When you click on a label, your inbox will automatically display any emails that are tagged with that label. In the left-hand menu, you can even click the vertical ellipses next to it to assign a custom color to that label. You can also add new labels at the bottom of this left-hand menu.Then, when you get a new email, you can click the marker icon at the top of the screen to open the Labels submenu, and assign as many labels as you’d like to the email.

There are some valid ways to use labels. Personally, I use mine to differentiate between different types of projects, like content management, development, and marketing. But I have also seen people use them for different clients, different types of information (including emails with important attachments) and different levels of priority/urgency.

2. Switch to new Gmail (if you haven’t already)

Google offered the opportunity to switch to the “new” version of Gmail in 2018. The design and user interfaces are much sleeker and simple to navigate, which will make your Gmail experience smoother but more importantly, there are a ton of new features you can use to optimize your Gmail organization. Switching over is simple: just click on the gear icon in the upper-right corner of the desktop app, and choose “Try the new Gmail.” If you see the option “Go back to classic Gmail,” then congratulations, you have already made the switch.

3. Divide labels into sub-labels

You may have noticed that the label creation box allows you to “nest” new labels under old labels. This is analogous to the subfolders you might find in a Microsoft product. I encourage you to use this as a way to keep all your labels organized, especially if you wear many hats in your organization.

For instance, you might have a label for “Client Communications,” with separate labels for each client, like “Client A,” “Client B,” and so on. You wouldn’t necessarily need to label an email as both “Client Communications” and “Client A,” but you could if you wanted to.

4. Use multiple labels per email

Single email can have a ton of information in it, sometimes bleeding over into multiple different categories. It does not make sense to maintain a strict one-to-one relationship between your emails and your labels. Instead, make sure you label all your emails with as many labels as are appropriate.

For instance, Client A sends you an email referring to a website you’re building for them. They mention that your account manager is doing excellent work. They also pass along login instructions for a new project management platform they’d like you to join. You might need to reference this email for a variety of purposes, so label it as “Client A’, ‘HR information’, ‘Web project management’ (or potentially a specific project within that broad label), and ‘Login instructions’.

5. Use the default display density

Some users will naturally prefer the “comfortable” or “compact” views, but for organizational purposes, and highly recommend the default. The main advantage of an alternate view is fitting more emails onto a single page or single view, but you won’t miss out on that many by keeping it at the default. In the new Gmail, you will have a handful of “display density” options, which change how your emails are laid out in the app. You can access them by clicking the Gear Icon.

The main perk of the default view is that it allows you to conveniently preview the attachments associated with each email. Not only will you get to see a color-coded indication of what types of files are attached to a conversation, you will also get the first several characters of the file title. It is great when trying to quickly find a specific attachment, like a purchase order or general ledger.