Google Tutor

Be a Gmail Ninja: Catapult Your Gmail Productivity in High Gear

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 10:45 PM PST

Gmail has a large number of functions to make our life easier, help us get more done, and get our Gmail inbox more organized. Just looking at the GT archive for Gmail, it’s obvious that Gmail is more than just a generic email account. You can use it to organize your tasks, and as a universal address book. Google wants you to get more out of your Gmail account, and has very specific tutorials to help you achieve this, based on how much email you receive.

Become a Gmail Ninja

Gmail has organized their tips based on how much email you receive, and named the different usage ‘levels’ based on the Gmail ninja theme. Gmail users are nicknamed, and your usage level starts off at ‘white belt’ for the light user, to Gmail Master for the heavy user.

Highlight from the White Belt Tips

If you are just receiving a few messages each day, perhaps your success doesn’t depend on being able to organize your inbox, but there are still a few things you can do to propel your productivity into the next level:

Use stars to differentiate messages that need immediate attention or are important.
Search, don’t sort messages.
If the sender of a message is online, you can reply by chat instead of a regular message.
Use labels to organize and categorize your messages.
Import email messages and contact information from your previous email account.

Highlights from Gmail’s Green Belt Tips

A more intermediate user, categorized by Gmail as receiving a dozen or so messages a day, can benefit from the following tips:

Use video chat to talk face to face, and finish up the conversation faster (to get back to your task list).
Gmail has a built in to-do list, called ‘tasks’. Use it to strike off completed tasks and get through your day faster.
Use filters to direct emails to different labels/folders as they come in. This cuts down on manual organization, and makes your messages easier to find.
‘Use undo send‘ to take back what you’ve just sent, and edit it a second time.
Use your vacation responder when you will be away from Gmail for a few days, or a few weeks.

Tips for the Black Belt Gmail User

If you don’t just get a few, or a dozen messages, but a lot then you may benefit from some advanced Gmail functions, such as:

Fly through your messages by using keyboard shortcuts to surf your inbox.
Use advanced search operators to dig through thousands of messages, and find exactly what you’re looking for.
Take filtering messages to the next level with personalized email addresses.
Here is a tip I will use every single day: send empty messages without being prompted to add more in the email body, if all you need is a subject line. For example, when you are asking someone a simple question like “Did you receive that book we ordered last week?”. Stop the prompt by typing “EOM” in the subject line (=End Of Message).
Use canned responses instead of tying the same thing again, and again, and again….. and again.
Send and receive messages from different email addresses, without ever leaving Gmail.

The Gmail Master

Being a Gmail Master means you get more messages than you can count, and you rely on Gmail to keep your personal and professional life organized and running smoothly. Chances are, many of us fall in this category! Here are some of the top tips Gmail offers for the heavy duty Gmail user:

Too busy to grab your phone, send SMS messages directly from Gmail. Turn it on in labs before you can use it.
One of the best tips, for Gmail users of all levels is to sign out remotely. Fear you’re still signed in at the library, and the next stranger using the public computer can delve into all your sensitive personal and work information? Here is how you sign out from a remote location.
Select multiple messages by holding down shift, then click the first message and the last message in the series to select multiple emails at once.

Check out many more tips on using Gmail, I’m sure you will discover some tips and tricks you never knew about. I certainly did, and some of them I can put to use right away!

What are your favorite Gmail functions? I look forward to seeing them in the comments!

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