Gmail has over 1.3 billion users across the world. Each of these users deals with their own set of situations and problems but the one issue that we all share is that of too many emails. The solution to this lies in the skill of email management. Knowing how to organize your Gmail inbox is an important survival skill that can help you stay above email overload and have mental peace.
Importance of email management
Email management proves its worth with its many benefits. Some of them are listed here to motivate you to know how to organize your gmail inbox:
1. Have an uncluttered inbox when you know how to organize your gmail inbox
Various email management software can help you get rid of the pile of too many emails. Softwares like Unroll.me help you easily unsubscribe from subscriptions and newsletters. This handles a major chunk of unimportant emails and reduces the number of emails that you need to go through, serving the purpose of a good email organizer. Lesser emails to deal with make it even easier to know how to organize your gmail inbox.
2. Managing your emails is saves you money
Most organizations prefer to have all their emails backed up. This means that the more emails we exchange every day, the higher the costs of backing those emails up are. Additionally, some organizations’ business continuity and disaster recovery plans require all of those emails to be backed up to other storage every day. This adds even more cost. Reducing the number of emails allows organizations to more effectively manage costs. Thus knowing how to organize your gmail inbox controls that amount and thus the cost.
3. Never lose an email with good email management
Knowing how to organize your gmail inbox using email management softwares provide us with great ease of handling emails. Over-burdening our inboxes lead to an unnecessary crowd that could cause you to lose important emails. Daily management of emails with a preset email management strategy can go a long way in protecting your email data. This also applies to companies that have an internal email management system.
4. Help business continuity and disaster recovery
Many organizations spend a lot of money ensuring that critical systems, like email, are up and running all the time. Loads more money goes further into making sure that the email system can be back on its feet if anything goes wrong too. And the amount of data, like email, that has to be recovered largely defines how quickly email can be recovered in a disaster. The better employees are at email management, the easier it is to recover from a serious problem.
7 ways to know how to organize your Gmail inbox
Now that we understand why it is important to know how to organize your gmail inbox, here are 7 easy ways to manage emails in your inbox.
1. Use the right email management tools
Various Gmail email management softwares for are now available that target different aspects of email management. These can go a long way in helping you understand how to organize your gmail inbox. Tools like Mailmanhq, EmailAnalytics, Gmelius, etc are highly recommended for better email management.
2. Delete what you can
There are many emails in our email inbox that can be easily deleted on our way to knowing how to organize your gmail inbox. That list is topped by newsletters and spam emails that tend to overflow in our inboxes. Unsubscribing from unnecessary subscriptions is what makes email management much easier too.
Work emails, on the other hand, can be difficult to delete. This difficulty is primarily because of the fear that you might need a particular email later. Here, archiving your emails would be a good Gmail email management solution. But more often than not, your organization might have an internal email management system in place. In these cases, you can delete your emails, and rest assured that you can access them whenever you need them.
How to delete emails in Gmail inbox
- On your computer, go to Gmail.
- Select emails to delete
At the top left, check the box to select all messages. If you have more than one page of messages, click Select all conversations.
- At the top, click Delete .
3. Star and Flag the important emails
Too many emails also lead to the problem of losing emails that we need. Starring the email, in this case, can be very useful. Gmail allows you to star emails and stores these starred emails in a separate folder for your convenience. Other email softwares like Outlook, have a feature named ‘Flag’ that allows you to differentiate such important emails.
You can star emails as a reminder to attend to them at the earliest. Or you could star an email that you know you will need urgently soon. Or you could star an email as a follow-up reminder. The possibilities of using the star feature are endless once you know how to organize your gmail inbox.
How to Star emails in Gmail
- On your computer, open Gmail.
- From your inbox, go to the left of the message, then click Star . If the message is open, click More. Add Star.
- If you have multiple stars, keep clicking the star icon until you see the one you want to use.
4. Know how to organize your Gmail inbox by sorting your emails
Most email softwares allow you to create folders and filters that direct incoming emails towards these folders. Create folders and slot your emails as ‘Important,’ ‘Unimportant,’ and ‘Urgent’ ones, according to the purpose they serve, and put them into the allotted folders. You can easily find the emails and read them later. This is one of the most effective tips for knowing how to organize your Gmail inbox.
Apart from the usual folders to categorize emails, you could also sort your emails up according to sender, or topic, or due date. With so many options available, Gmail email management becomes very easy.
How to Sort emails in folders
- Select an email message.
- Drag and drop it into a folder. Note: To move more than one email, select an email, hold down the Shift key and select other messages, and then click, drag, and drop them into a folder.
5. Plan your email management schedule
Email notifications and their chimes are a big obstacle in maintaining focus during work. Though emails are unavoidable, getting disturbed by them all the time is not. Scheduling or planning out time slots for email management can help us know how to organize your gmail inbox.
Setting aside a time slot every day to just read and respond to emails is another effective email management tip. Suppose if we allot 3 pm as our ‘Email checking’ time. As we try to follow the same 3 pm slot, our emails will become lesser and lesser. And you will ensure that you remain on top of your emails. This will help us achieve the Inbox zero in no time, as you stop procrastinating managing your emails.
Further Reading: 12 Gmail Tips to Increase Your Email Productivity
6. Delegate email tasks suitably
What if we receive an email that might suit someone else better? That might be because someone else is an expert for the email or is better acquainted with the task. Forwarding the email to the appropriate person is not only good for the task done but also for your email management. But also do not forget to follow up on whether the task was done or not, to make sure that things do get their due attention.
7. Respond to incoming emails in time
Prompt email management works only with a prompt response. But does this mean you must reply to all emails you receive promptly? No! By responding, we mean you need to not leave any email unattended. These responses could be:
- Reply to the email if it will take you less than a minute, or requires no other action.
- If it needs a quick action in order to reply to it, do it right away or star the email to pay attention to it at the earliest.
- If the email will require a longer task to reply to, star it or move it to a ‘respond to later’ folder.
These responses make sure that no email is left untouched or unattended as you learn how to organize your gmail inbox. Thus you are always up to date with email management, without compromising on your productivity.
Knowing how to organize your gmail inbox is a skill you need
Email management is a skill that you and your email inbox need to survive in the corporate world. Mental peace and clarity can be greatly affected when one sees a constantly full email inbox. This can hamper your work quality while also decreasing your productivity. Hence knowing how to organize your gmail inbox is essential not only for your mental health but also for a successful professional career.
FAQs
1. Use filters and folders to organize emails.
2. Star or flag important emails to differentiate them.
3. Convert emails to to-do lists to get through them easily.
4. Snooze emails that need more work to get done.
1. Open Gmail.
2. At the top right, click Settings. See all settings.
3. Click the Labels tab.
4. Scroll to the Labels section and click Create new label.
5. Enter the label name and click Create.
1. Use email management softwares like Mailman.
2. Respond to emails promptly using the 2 minute rule.
3. Delete the emails after you deal with them.
4. Delegate emails if they suit someone else’s responsibilities better.
5. Organize your emails with folders, filters and labels.
1. Use filters and folders to organize emails.
2. Star or flag important emails to differentiate them.
3. Convert emails to to-do lists to get through them easily.
4. Snooze emails that need more work to get done.
