How To Use Gmail Like a Productivity Pro | 9 Minutes

If you're a Gmail user and you want to get more from the program, I'm going to share with you today my 7 power tips to massively produce your productivity from Gmail. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another Technology Tuesday. I'm a huge Gmail user and I'm going to share with you the 7 ways that I use it to boost my productivity. So I'm going to load up my Gmail so you can follow along with me as I explain the tips. Number 1 is Rapportive. And Rapportive is a cool way for you to be able to find out a little bit of information on who the people are that you're talking with. So you can learn about them at rapportive.com. And what it does is, instead of showing you the ads on the side of Google, it shows you information about the person that you're connected to. So if I load up an email, I got this one from Ricardo, you'll see on the side, it'll show Ricardo, it'll show his picture, it'll show his email, it'll show his LinkedIn, It shows that we're connected. It shows me his Twitter. It shows me I can add him to my circle, his Skype. He commented on one of my videos. It shows me a lot of information about him at a quick glance instead of seeing the ads. So super helpful, especially when you're dealing with people who you have no idea who they are and they're emailing you. My second power tip is use the tabs. So if you're back on your inbox, you may have noticed that Gmail added a whole bunch of different tabs to the top. For the most part, I deleted all of them and just kept one. I chose Forums, but you can keep whichever one that you want. And why I kept it here is to have two major inboxes. One where everything goes, and in the tab, the Forums tab, I put all my important emails. So these are the ones from my family, here's my dad, from people on my team, from key suppliers, from media, from big customers. And I do this so that when I check my email in the morning, I only check my Forums tab. I just check it here to see what important emails have come in from the VIPs in my life that I need to get back to. You can also set it on your Gmail app for your phone or for your tablet to look only at that tab. So it's an easy way to sort through your emails. If I wanted to add somebody in, so here's a Google+ Hangout, say I wanted to always have that go to Forms, I could drag it in. And then there's this little rule here, do this for future messages. I always click yes so that any new Google Hangout would automatically appear in here as well. So here's the 1, and any future ones will automatically appear here as well. So that's how I created these custom rules to have the VIPs go to my Forms tab. Power tip number 3 is use Boomerang. If you've ever found that you wanted to send an email but not have it send out right away, you wanted to send it tomorrow or the next week as a reminder, or you just didn't want to hear back from that person too soon, so you want to delay the email going out, you can use Boomerang. So if I click on an email here, back to Ricardo, I could do a reply. And then with Boomerang installed, you can send later. So I could say, thank you, Ricardo, and I could click send later and then pick a time where I want this message to go out. It could be an hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, tomorrow afternoon, tomorrow morning, a week, a month, a specific time. You can make it recurring so that it sends every week if you wanted to. So if you wanna nag somebody or remind them or remind yourself, you can set a recurring message. The other thing that it lets you do is it'll return the message to you as an option if you haven't heard back from that person. So if you're using Gmail as a sales tool or you wanna make sure that people are reading what you're writing, then you can say boomerang this in 2 days. It'll load this up so that it logs me into my Boomerang account. And then basically, if I send this email to Ricardo and he doesn't respond to me within whatever time set I I wanna put in, then it'll send it back to my inbox as a reminder that I need to get back in touch with Ricardo. To get this, it's free for a certain number of emails, and you just go to boomeranggmail.com. My power tip number 4 is use labels and filters. So labels are like folders. If you're used to Outlook, labels are your folders that appear down the side here. And what I use the filters for are basically rules that help you figure out which emails should go to which labels, which folders. And what I really like using this for is if I get a lot of emails that are about a certain topic that I don't want to clog up my inbox, right? I already have enough emails coming in here that I don't want to be— I don't want to have it filled up here. So an example could be social media notifications or sales of my products. So on the side here, eJunkie is sales of my online products. That I could go in and see what the most recent sales are. Uh, oDesk are notifications from oDesk that probably have been billed or updates or notifications that I need to get through. And so I set automatic rules that they skip my inbox and they go to that specific folder so that when I'm ready to look at them, I can just go in and look at them. To access it, I need to move my screen over a little bit so you guys can see. You got to go to the settings button And at the top there are labels and filters. So labels are all the different labels that you want to create. So there are some that are automatically there and you can decide if you want to show them or hide them by default. And then I've created these. So I have Amar, eJunkie, Fiverr, Gretchen, Monday, Social, Authors, AWeber. I've got a lot of labels for a lot of different things. And then if you go to the filters, it lets you set up the rules. So I can find the eJunkie one as an example. So here, anything that comes from notifications@ejunkie.com, uh, I apply the label eJunkie and have it skip the inbox. So it doesn't fill out my inbox, but it goes automatically to the folder and I can check it out whenever I want. So super helpful, time-saving, and helps keep things organized. My power tip number 5 is use forwarding. And forwarding allows you to send emails of a certain kind. You set up a rule that then it's forwarded to somebody else or to a different email address. So if there's something that you you are always sending to somebody on your team that you want them to always see, instead of having to manually do it, it can automatically go to them. First, to do it, you have to set up forwarding. So you go to the forwarding tab at the top. This is again under the, the settings, and you have to be approved to be able to forward messages. So these are a few of the people on my team that I've set up so that I can send emails to them, and it'll send them a notification to say, hey, Evan wants to be able to forward emails to you yes or no, and they approve. Then once they have approved, you can go to the filters and you can find different forwards on. So you create a rule to say, you know, this comes from, uh, whatever email address, it automatically gets forwarded to this person. So here's something that's going— this is, uh, media releases that I get goes to Monzur, who's on my team and is in charge of finding opportunities. It also goes to Adis and Justin R. Which test won? These were marketing tests that I got and this would forward to Maria who was doing marketing for me. And so any emails that are coming in regularly that you know you just wanna forward to somebody else, you can set that up so it happens automatically. My number 6 tip is auto-advance. This is a, a minor trick but one that saves me a lot of time in having to click. So if I look at an email and I see Ricardo and he wishes me happy Easter. I can write back to him and I say, thank you, Ricardo, much appreciated. After I send, I'm gonna archive it and it'll auto-advance to the next email. So if I go archive, it goes to my next email in my box. So normally you'd have to click back or it'll send you back here, then I gotta click on the next one. So it saves a click each time. And you know, a small little trick, but one, if you're just going through your inbox, makes it so much easier. To get there, let me move this over again so we can see. You want to go to your settings, then click on Labs, and then one of them will be called Auto Advance. So if you do a search here for Auto Advance, you'll be able to find it, and you just have to enable it. And it's free and super helpful and saves you time in answering emails. And my number 7 power tip is use canned responses. If you find yourself saying the same thing to a lot of different emails that are coming in, it's the same response, you can use a canned response so that you don't have to always type in the same thing over and over and over again. So show you how it works, it's pretty quick. You go compose email, at the bottom here next to the trash can you see the down arrow, you can go to canned responses, and in here I've got 3. It's a coffee meeting, a salsa private, a phone meeting, and if we're going to meet for coffee I'll just put it here. What I wanna do is send people a link to my schedule. So I have a schedule that people can look at and then book. So I'll say, here's the link to my schedule so we can plan a time, right? So that, and I, I never remember what this link is. And so this saves me the time from having to, uh, put that in. So if you ever have to remember a link or you just find yourself having the same responses to lots of different emails, you can set up a canned response and then automatically include it with a few clicks instead of having to type it out each time. Thank you so much for watching. My question for you guys today is, how are you using Gmail? I'd love to hear your tips, your productivity hacks. Leave it in the comments below. If you like this video and you want to see more, don't forget to subscribe to the channel and to the newsletter. Thank you so much for watching. Continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.