How To Check Only Emails You Want To See

An ever popular response to the question “How do I stay productive” is, close your email.

Uh… OK, sounds simple enough and it makes total sense. Email is a time suck. Try to implement it, and you’ll find it is easier said than done especially when you need to refer to your email in order to get the job done.

For example, if you are a service provider and your client’s instructions are in an email. Or, when your partner/assistant emails to tell you something is wrong on the website and you can’t remember all the details.

I guess it depends on your profession. In web development and for much of my online business, in order to get things done, I need my email(s). It’s inevitable.

What to do? I’ve tried copying actionable emails into Evernote but (much as I love it), that was another minute action I have to perform. Besides, I’m not a fan of keeping copies of stuff all over the place.

Keeping Email where it is, is the answer, but how does one skip the inbox entirely and still get to check/refer only the emails that you want to see?

The solution is so amazingly simple.

As a Google Apps (Gmail) user, I already use labels to organize everything. One of the labels is “Team”. I’ve automated it, so that whenever someone from my team emails me, Gmail attaches the “Team” label. That’s step one.

When you have a label created, you will also see it appear in the left menu. So whenever you want to look at emails with the label “Team”, you click that.

label-in-menu

You already knew that. How does that help you skip the inbox altogether? It’s easy. Once you click that label, you simply bookmark it in your browser.

techbasedmarketing-mail

Now, when I need to refer and check on emails from the team, I just hit that bookmark. No more getting distracted with promotional emails, countless notifications and getting sucked into your inbox.

You could also set up your Inbox in Settings >> Inbox to a label and set its priority. That might work out better for you. I just prefer to bookmark.

Let’s take it a step further

If you paid attention, you’ll notice that in Gmail, each label has it’s own URL. Don’t believe me? Here are screenshots from a few of my labels.

-foodaplenty----lynette-techbasedmarketingcom---techbasedmarketing-mail

Knowing this, you an amp up your email productivity in more ways, like:

1. Bookmark a few key labels, but don’t go crazy. I only bookmark one because that’s all I’m interested in throughout the day. Communicating and supporting the team. You can check your inbox later, at a pre-determined time. So choose carefully.

2. Stop hunting the long list of labels on the side. Gmail does not make it easy to find your labels in the menu. You could search, but the easier way is to replace the label name in the URL (the highlighted parts in the screenshot above) and hit enter. Ta Dah! Instant filtering and again, you can bounce from one label to another without getting caught up with emails that aren’t going to help you get the job done at that moment.

This has kept me from going down the email rabbit hole so many times. In fact, I have Gmail open in the next window right now, but it’s not pulling me away from writing this post.

Try it. I hope it works out very well for you.

Do You Want A Hands-Free Business?

Then get this guide to help you systemize your business so you'll have more time working on your business.

!
!

Hey! I want to make sure you know what you're getting here. In addition to the guide, you will also receive our memo that includes special offers, announcements and of course actionable information.

Terms and Conditions checkbox is required.
Something went wrong. Please check your entries and try again.
Facebook Comments

5 Comments

  1. Nikki B. on April 24, 2015 at 12:55 pm

    Great idea, Lynette! I never thought about bookmarking the label inboxes. 🙂



    • Lynette on April 24, 2015 at 4:42 pm

      Yep. You can even do stuff like that for FB groups.



  2. Howard on April 24, 2015 at 2:49 pm

    Your advice for Gmail works. Most of the time. Except when the filtering stops.

    My experience is that Gmail filters quit working occasionally and unpredictably. The cause is generally not easy to track down, and sometimes the filters in question will suddenly start working again after I start the process of debugging my filters, but before I actually make any changes. Sometimes I can delete a filter and replace it will exactly the same filter, and it will work again.

    I suspect that the “Do No Evil (Unless we think we can get away with it)” company is laying the foundation for a paid email solution by gradually reducing the quality and reliability of the gmail service.. To date, their attempts to directly monetize gmail have not worked well so far, but they haven’t stopped trying.

    My advice is do not depend on “free” services for *anything* important, especially from Google.



    • Lynette on April 24, 2015 at 4:41 pm

      Yes Howard. It does rely on filtering. I’ve personally not experienced filtering to stop though. Maybe because I am on Google Apps and while I have Gmail, it’s not an inbox I pay a whole lot of attention to.

      I wonder… are the filters in question tied to a forwarded email? E.g. Emails that are sent to address1@yoursite.com but forwarded into your@gmail.com? I do know that they throttle forwarded emails.



  3. susanne on April 25, 2015 at 2:01 am

    Great reminder,,,knew this about gmail but didn’t pay attention to how useful it could be. Bookmarking a label is a great way to avoid being distracted as you say with enticing emails. Also have not had a problem with filters. Now if I could only do this with my other email account I might get something done 🙂