In this instructional YouTube video, Randy Dean – the "Email Sanity Expert" and author of Taming the Email Beast – walks viewers through three of his favorite Gmail productivity techniques, all rooted in a GTD‑style email decision tree. He first explains how to quickly triage messages by using Gmail’s “More” menu to add emails to Google Tasks or create Calendar events, and how to add senders to Google Contacts via a simple hover. Next, he shows how to overcome Gmail’s single‑signature limitation by enabling the Labs feature “Canned Responses,” allowing users to save and insert reusable email templates for common replies. Finally, he demonstrates how to enable and learn Gmail keyboard shortcuts, recommending users print the shortcut list and practice regularly to become a “Gmail maestro.” Throughout, Dean emphasizes speed, organization, and the habit of moving actionable emails onto task or calendar systems, ending with a call to visit his website and subscribe to his channel.
Chapters
Hello everyone, welcome to today's video tip, 3 of my favorite Gmail tips. And I am Randy Dean, popularly known as the Email Sanity Expert and author of the recent Amazon email bestseller, Taming the Email Beast. Today what I want to do is basically go in and show you some of the tips that I use related to my email decision tree. When I go out and teach programs for people how to better manage their email, I basically show them a little strategy on email management built off of some things I learned from David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done, nearly 25 years ago. And the basic premise is simply that if you get an email that's something you can handle quickly, do it right now. If you get an email that takes more than a couple minutes, that is something that should go onto your calendar or your task list. And then once you get that email done or on your calendar or task list, you either file it or you delete it. If you don't have a good place to file it, of course, you make one and put it there. And I show in a lot of my Outlook strategies how to do just that using Microsoft Outlook. Outlook, but a lot of these same capabilities are built right into the Gmail tool. Let me show you what I mean. Let me jump into my Gmail account. As you can see, I've got my account nice and clear. And here's one of the things that a lot of people don't realize with Gmail. You can actually click on an email inside of Gmail. It'll open up the email, and if you go up to this More button, you can click on More, and it gives you the options to either A, add this email now to the task list, or B, create an event from the email. So I can click here, Add to Tasks, and notice it actually creates a task based off of the subject line. I can click on this little more thing to create more details, and what I want to do is actually change the title of this to Create Video of Gmail Tips. Due date, I'll say tomorrow, and I can even move it to a different task list versus my Today list. I could move it out to my Webinar Series list. And then once I have that done, I can hit Back to List, and now that task has been created. Now I can also come up here and hit the More button and do this base— same basic treatment to create a calendar event. Create Event. And when I hit Create Event, it's going to create a calendar event based off of that same email. And notice that it's got the same subject line up here, but I want to change that subject line up here real quick. Select all the text clear that out. And then what I will do is do the same exact thing. Create video Gmail tips. And let's say I want to do that tomorrow at 11, not PM, but let's move it up to 11 AM. And location, home Office, East Lansing, Michigan. And then I can basically take it— notice that I've actually even got the email text down here inside of the note of this calendar event. Then I can hit save and it will become part of my calendar in Gmail. Do I want to send an invitation to guests? No, I don't want to send an invitation. I'm just going to save it and now it becomes part of the calendar. Notice that I can even come back and let's say I'd like to add this Randall F. Dean guy, who happens to be me this time, to my Google Contacts. All I have to do is put my mouse over the sender's name and it will give me the option to add this person into Contacts. Now of course I'm already in my own contact list so I don't need to add it, but if, if I were a new person for my database, if I just put my mouse over the sender's name of the email, I can come down here, click on Add to Contacts, and it will give me the option to do a full treatment to add to Contacts. So that's the first tip and come Coming back to the little presentation, you'll see that it follows the decision tree. Quick ones I get done, longer ones in Gmail, I use the more button to add it to either Tasks or Calendar, or I just hover over the contact name to add it to Google Contacts. Alright, so that's the first thing. Now, another thing I teach is how to use in Microsoft Outlook the signatures tool to create lots of automated replies and signatures for repeating messages that you use over and over again. And, and I sort of say that sort of fits in this little 3-minute box, but you actually have a similar capability inside of Gmail. Now what's interesting is inside of Gmail, if you come up here and click on the Settings tab and come down and actually click on Settings, you'll notice that inside of the General Settings tab it only gives you the option to create a single signature, and that's not very useful if you're trying to use this as a tool for automated replies. So here's my basic signature inside of Gmail, and as you can see, it's just a single signature and it gets automatically inserted. But I did a little bit of searching, and if you come up here when you're inside of Settings— once again, to do that, you just click on the gear, click on Settings, and then inside of Settings, click on this thing called Labs. And when you click on Labs, you'll notice it says it's got some crazy experimental stuff. Not all this stuff is that crazy and/or experimental. The one I strongly recommend that you get and look into is this thing called Canned Responses, because let me show you what happens once you have Canned Responses is turned on. I can come into compose and notice that it auto-populated that signature I just showed you. So that automatically put this right inside of here. But now watch this, I can come down to the lower right-hand corner and this is more options. I wish this was bigger so it was a little easier for people to see, but this little dropdown gives you more options. One of the options now is canned responses. And so I can either delete some of my canned responses, save some new ones, but look at this, or insert Insert Standard Info Request. This is a standard sales letter that I use again and again when people ask me to come speak at an upcoming event, conference, workshop, or company training. And it's basically a fully fledged sales letter. And now all I have to do, I can actually take this top line of information right here, pick that up and move it up into the subject line, and now I can quickly erase that little bit of additional information. And personalize this thing. Dear Randy, that's pretty easy, and that's the way you can use these canned responses. Messages that you tend to use over and over again, turn them into canned response. Save the text, save it as a canned response, and then you can simply push the buttons and automatically create it as an insert as part of your email message. Now, one more really cool Gmail tip I'd like to show you here. Let me close this, and what I want to show you is something back inside the General Lab. Not a lot of people realize this is in here, but if you come down inside of the General Lab, I want to show you something that I think is remarkably useful. Take a look here under keyboard shortcuts, and I have mine turned on. Hit the Learn More button because inside of Learn More, what this has is a whole series of keyboard shortcuts. If you're a heavy Gmail user, that are available if you're either using a computer device or an Android device. And look at this, you can open this up and see the ones that are always turned on These are things that you can master. I'd recommend if you're a heavy Gmail user, print this page out, print out the list of the keyboard shortcuts that are always on as well as the ones that you need to turn on. And by having this and printing it out, just practice one or two of these a week for the next 2 or 3 months, and in a couple months you will be a Gmail maestro because you'll be able to do so many of these things so quickly without even having to move your mouse. You will be able to do it just by using keystroke That's a really powerful tip that can help with this. So coming back to this, let's go ahead and finish this thing up. We'll get past the decision tree. I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for joining me for this little event. I hope that this helps you use your Gmail maybe a little bit better, a little bit smarter, a little bit more efficiently, which is really basically what I try to do whenever I do any of my programs for any of my clients or customers. If you'd like to learn more about what it is that I do, go out and check out my website, randaldean.com, where you'll see information about my Outlook my Google and Gmail programs, my smartphone and tablet programs, and other programs that I lead related to time and technology management. And if you like these videos, please subscribe to my YouTube channel. Thank you again for your time.
