The internet changed many things in our daily lives. Our communications have moved to social media. We rely heavily on email in our day-to-day business, almost completely replacing traditional paper mail. We even changed the way we send our resumes in.
It seems everyone is on LinkedIn these days. With the touch of a button, you can boost your LinkedIn Profile and get more job requests using SocialGreg. Sounds good, right? There’s one small catch: you would probably have a giant influx to your (already messy) Gmail account, and sorting through the job applications will be a nightmare. Well, it’s not so bad. I’m sure you can manage a little bit of organization in exchange for the opportunity to get your dream job. If you need some tips and tricks on Gmail organization, here are a few:
5 Tips to Keep Your Gmail Organized
1. Get in the habit of unsubscribing
The enormous amount of mail that goes to your inbox just means that the important emails are left unseen, or at the very least seen too late. Whenever you see an email to some newsletter you likely didn’t subscribe to in the first place, scroll down to the bottom. You are bound to find the word ‘Unsubscribe’ in very small text. Alternatively, you might find something along the lines of “click here if you don’t wish to see emails like this”. Anyway, just scroll down and unsubscribe. You can thank me when there’s less unnecessary traffic to your Gmail.
2. Spring cleaning is long overdue
Now that you’ve handled the future traffic coming towards your Gmail, it’s time to clean out all the old emails still stored on your Gmail. If you’ve been using the same account for years, this could take some time. It is still worth starting because those emails are taking up space in your account which could otherwise be used more efficiently. Also, Gmail plans to delete users that over their storage limit soon. So it’s good to start sorting through your online storage now. Overwhelmed? Start by a few emails at a time, because Rome wasn’t built in a day.
3. Automatic Marking is your friend
We’ve all procrastinated dealing with an email when we’re busy doing something else. So instead of leaving your inbox to grow a random pile of all your emails, allow Gmail to sort them into different categories. This means you can click on a list of job offers and go through them without any interruption from newsletters, spam, or other random emails.
4. Use Notes Instead of Emails at Work
You probably have thousands of emails saying “Meeting Cancelled”. On average, office workers receive 141 emails every day and send out 40. These emails can quickly fill up your inbox without you realize it. Gmail has a Notes feature, whereby you can add notes to an email. The notes appear linked to an original email thread, so all participants know specifically what the notes are about. Also, they don’t create additional email threads in your inbox and avoid the mess.
5. Archiving for the less important emails
When you’ve received a newsletter that you might want to read later on in the week, but do not want it to crowd your inbox, you can easily archive it. Archiving helps organize your email inbox into what’s important now, and what will be important later on. It is also a quick way to handle your incoming mail without needing to read it.
Using these simple tips can help get you started towards a perfectly organized Gmail inbox. There is no need to keep it cluttered. Organizing your inbox will surely increase your productivity, so why wait? Get started now.
